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Enigmas op Life 


By W. R. GREG. 

II 


“The Soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed. 

Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made." 

Waller. 



3 

i > 

» > > 


BOSTON: 

JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 

1875 . 










AC 8 

im 


From Advance Sheets, 


486565 

H.4,‘36 



University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
Cambridge. 






Q V S iaj b 


preface: 



HE following pages contain rather suggested thoughts 


that may fructify in other minds than distinct prop¬ 
ositions which it is sought argumentatively to prove. 
In the later years of life the intellectual vision, if often 
clearer, usually grows less confident and enterprising. 
Age is content to think, where Youth would have been 
anxious to demonstrate and establish; and problems and 
enigmas which, at thirty, I fancied I might be able to 
solve, I find, at sixty, I must be satisfied simply to 
propound. 

By the severer class of scientific reasoners (if I have 
any such among my readers), it will, I am aware, be 
noted with disapproval that throughout this little book 
there runs an undercurrent of belief in two great doc¬ 
trines, which yet I do not make the slightest attempt 
to prove. I have everywhere, it will be said, assumed 
the existence of a Creator and of a continued life be¬ 
yond the grave, though I give no reason for my faith 
in either; though I obviously do not hold those points 
of the Christian creed on the ordinary Christian grounds; 


and though I cannot fail to be conscious that these 
questions underlie, or inextricably mingle with nearly 








IV 


PREFACE. 


every one of the subjects I have treated. I have ap¬ 
proached, with some pretension to philosophical inves¬ 
tigation, a few of the enigmas of human life, yet have 
deliberately evaded the two deepest and darkest of all, 
and precisely the two, moreover, whose determination 
can most satisfactorily solve the rest. I admit the 
charge, and my defence is simply this. 

The religious views in which we have been brought 
up inevitably color to the last our tone of thought on 
all cognate matters, and largely affect the manner and 
direction of our approach to them, even when every 
dogma of our early creed has been, if not abandoned, 
yet deprived of its dogmatic form as well as of its 
original logical or authoritative basis. Not only are 
doctrines often persistently retained, though the old 
foundations of them have been undermined or surren¬ 
dered ; but beliefs, that have dwelt long in the mind, 
leave indelible traces of their residence years after 
they have been discarded and dislodged. It would be 
more correct to say that they linger w T ith a sort of 
loving obstinacy in their old abode, long after they 
have received formal notice to quit. Their chamber is 
never, to the end of time, quite swept and garnished. 
The mind is never altogether as if they had not been 
there. When a “ yes ” or “ no ” answer is demanded 
to a proposition for and against which argument and 
evidence seem equally balanced, the decision is sure to 
be different in minds, one of which comes new to the 
question while the other has held a preconceived opin¬ 
ion, even though on grounds which he now recognizes 



PREFACE. 


V 


as erroneous or insufficient. It was my lot to inherit 
from Puritan forefathers the strongest impressions as to 
the great doctrines of Religion at a time when the 
mind is most plastic and most tenacious of such im¬ 
pressions, — 

“ Wax to receive, and marble to retain.” 

And though I recognize as fully as any man of science 
the hollowness of most of the foundations on which 
those impressions were based, and the entire invalidity 
ot the tenure on which I then held them, yet I by no 
means feel compelled to throw up the possession mere¬ 
ly because the old title-deeds were full of flaws. The 
existence of a wise and beneficent Creator and of a 
renewed life hereafter are still to me beliefs — especially 
the first — very nearly reaching the solidity of absolute 
convictions. The one is almost a Certainty, the other 
a solemn Hope. And it does not seem to me unphilo- 
sophic to allow my contemplation of Life or my specu¬ 
lations on the problems it presents to run in the 
grooves worn in the mind by its antecedent history, so 
long as no dogmatism is allowed, and no disprovciblc 
datum is suffered for a moment to intrude. 

The question — when stated with the perfect unre¬ 
serve which alone befits it — lies in small compass. 
Of actual knowledge we have simply nothing. Those 
who believe in a Creative Spirit and Ruler of the Uni¬ 
verse are forced to admit that they can adduce no 
proofs or arguments cogent enough to compel convic¬ 
tion from sincere minds constituted in another mould. 



VI 


PREFACE. 


There are facts, indications, corollaries, which seem to 
suggest the great inference almost irresistibly to our 
minds. There are other facts, indications, corollaries, 
which to other minds seem as irresistibly to negative 
that inference. Data, admitted by both, appear of- very 
different weight to each. The difficulties in the way 
of either conclusion are confessedly stupendous. The 
difficulty of conceiving the eternal pre-existence of a 
Personal Creator I perceive to be immense; the diffi¬ 
culty of conceiving the origin and evolution of the ac¬ 
tual Universe independently of such Personal Creator I 
should characterize as insuperable. The Positivist — 
the devotee of pure Science — would simply reverse the 
adjectives. We can neither of us turn the minor into 
the major difficulty for the other without altering the 
constitution of his intelligence. He does not say, 
“ There is no God,” he merely says, “ I see no phenom¬ 
ena which irresistibly suggest one; I see many which 
negative the suggestion; and I have greater difficulty 
in conceiving all that the existence of such a Being 
would involve than in the contrary assumption.” I do 
not say, “ I know there is a God ”; I only say I ob¬ 
serve and infer much that forces that conviction in 
upon me; but I recognize that these observations and 
inferences would not entitle me to demand the same 
conviction from him. In fine, neither doctrine can be 
proved or disproved; the votaries of neither are en¬ 
titled to insist upon imposing their conviction upon 
others, on the plea of its demonstrability. I am en¬ 
titled, however, to retain mine as, to me, the believ- 




PREFACE. 


Yll 


able one. Lawyers tell us of a title that is unsalable, 
but indefeasible. Scientific men speak of “ Provisional 
Theories,” “ good working hypotheses,” and the like, — 
the goodness depending upon their value in explaining 
and elucidating phenomena, not in their capability of 
being demonstrated. There is some analogy in the 
case we are considering. 

Again, visible and ascertainable phenomena give no 
countenance to the theory of a future or spiritual life. 
It is a matter of intuitive conviction, or of deduction 
from received or assumed doctrines, not of logical infer- 
ence from established data A I cannot demand assent to 


* I have discussed this question fully in the last chapter of “ The 
Creed of Christendom.” There is, however, one indication of im¬ 
mortality which was not there dwelt upon, hut which ought not 
to he left out of consideration, though, of course, its value will 
be very differently estimated hy different minds. I refer to that 
spontaneous , irresistible, and perhaps nearly universal feeling we all 
experience on watching, just after death, the body of some one we 
have intimately known ; the conviction, I mean (a sense, a con¬ 
sciousness, an expression which you have to fight against if you wish 
to disbelieve or shake it off), that the form lying there is somehow 
not the Ego you have loved. It does not produce the effect of 
that person’s personality. You miss the Ego, though you have 
the frame. The Afisible Presence only makes more vivid the sense 
of actual Absence. Every feature, every substance, every phenom¬ 
enon, is there, — and is unchanged. You have seen the eyes as 
firmly closed, the limbs as motionless, the breath almost as im¬ 
perceptible, the face as fixed and expressionless, before, in sleep 
or in trance, without the same peculiar sensation. The impres¬ 
sion made is indefinable, and is not the result of any conscious 
process of thought: — that that body, quite unchanged to the eye, 


\ 




Till 


PREFACE. 


it, with any justice or on any plea of cogmt argument, 
from a reasoner who is destitute of my intuitive convic¬ 
tion, or who deems my deductions erroneous, or demurs 
to the doctrines from which they flow. But, on the other 
hand, since I can specify undeniable indications which 
point in that direction, and difficulties which to all ap¬ 
pearance that hypothesis only can elucidate, and since 
he can in no way demonstrate its untenability or its 
contrariety with known truths, I am entitled to hold it 
as to me, though not to all, the most credible belief. 

These will seem to enthusiastic believers disappoint¬ 
ing and timid positions to take up on such momentous 
questions; but the most advanced positions are not al¬ 
ways the most tenable, and the humblest are often the 
strongest. The safe position for a candid reasoner, and 
the only true one, is not that which is most menacing 
to his antagonist, but one from which the holder can¬ 
not be dislodged. 


I have a word or two further to say in reference to 
each of these main doctrines. 

Those who cling most lovingly to faith in a future 
life, and would avoid the shocks which close thought 

is not, and never was, your friend, — the Ego you were conversant 
with ; that his or her individuality was not the garment before 
you plus a galvanic current ; that, in fact, the Ego you knew 
once and seek still was not that, — is not there. And if not there, 
it must be elsewhere or nowhere ; and “ nowhere ” I believe modern 
science will not suffer us to predicate of either force or substance 
that once has been. 



PREFACE. 


IX 


always causes to it, will do well to guard against every 
temptation to define or particularize its nature, mode, or 
conditions, to realize its details or processes, to form a 
distinct or plausible theory regarding it, — especially a 
local, physical, or biological one. Let it rest in the 
vague, if you would have it rest unshaken. For, while 
it is more than probable that our imagination is utterly 
incapable of picturing or conceiving, or even conjectur¬ 
ing or approaching, the actual truth about the unseen 
world, it is certain that our reason will find no diffi¬ 
culty at all in demolishing or discrediting every con¬ 
crete and systematic conception we might form. The 
Great Idea — fascinating and maintainable so long as it 
is suffered to remain nebulous and un-outlined — con¬ 
geals and carnalizes, the moment we endeavor to em¬ 
body it, into something which is vulnerable at every 
point, and which we are forced to admit is, on one ground 
or another, unsustainable. 

We all recognize instinctively that a sense of iden¬ 
tity, a conscious continuity of the Ego, is an essential 
element of the doctrine. A life beyond the grave, in 
other worlds and under other conditions of corporeal or 
spiritual existence, but devoid of this main feature, would 
not, it is evident, answer the purposes of the doctrine, 
nor fulfil those yearnings of the heart and soul which 
many writers hold to be its most convincing indication. 
Apart from this consciousness of personal identity, a 
future life would be simply a new creation, — the be¬ 
ings who came into existence would be other beings, not 
ourselves awakened and renewed. The curious, but 



X 


PREFACE. 


not unattractive, Pythagorean theory of transmigration, 
reaching, as it did, both to the future and the past, 
failed altogether in this essential. It is probable that 
the determination to hold fast by this essential — a de¬ 
termination often half unconscious and instinctive — 
fostered, if it did not originate, the astonishing doctrine 
/ of the resurrection of the body, which has so strangely 
and thoughtlessly (like many minor dogmas) found its 
way into the popular creed. The primitive parents or 
congealers of that creed, whoever they may have been, 
— innocent of all science and oddly muddled in their 
metaphysics, but resolute in their conviction that the 
same persons who died here should be, in very deed, 
the same who should rise hereafter, — systematized their 
anticipations into the notion that the grave should give 
up its actual inmates for their ordained transformation 
and their allotted fate. The current notion of the ap¬ 
proaching end of the world no doubt helped to blind 
them to the vulnerability, and indeed the fatal self- 
contradictions, of the form in which they had embodied 
their faith. Of course, if they had taken time to think, 
or if the Fathers of the Church had been more given 
to thinking in the rigid meaning of the word, they would 
have discovered that this special form rendered that faith 
absurd, indefensible, and virtually impossible. They did 
not know, or they never considered, that the buried body 
soon dissolves into its elements, which in the course of 
generations and centuries pass into other combinations, 
form part of other living creatures, feed and constitute 
countless organizations one after another; so that when 




PREFACE. 


XI 


the graves are summoned “ to give up the dead that are 
in them,” and the sea “ the dead that are in it,” they 
will be called on to surrender what they no longer possess, 
and what no supernal power can give back to them. It 
never occurred to those creed-makers, who thus took 

-v ' 

upon themselves to carnalize an idea into a fact, that 
for every atom that once went to make up the body 
they committed to the earth, there would be scores of 
claimants before the Great Day of account, and that even 
Omnipotence could scarcely be expected to make the 
same component part be in two or ten places at once. 
The original human frames, therefore, could not be had 
when, as supposed, they would be wanted. 

Neither, apparently, did it occur to them that these 
bodily shells and frames would not be wanted. “ Flesh 
and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” The per¬ 
ishable carcass could have no part nor lot in the great 
scene then to be enacted. The perished carcass could not 
be needed (like the bone “ Luz ” so queerly invented for 
the purpose by the later Jews) to supply materials for “ the 
spiritual body,” and would not be forthcoming if it were. 

Moreover, what could such incongruous elements as 
nitrogen and phosphates, and sodium and other metallic 
bases, be doing in immaterial spheres, and before the 
judgment-seat of God ? It was the souls of men that 
were to be the actors in that mighty Drama. And, again, 
where were those souls during the countless ages that 
elapse between their exit from the mortal husk and their 
appearance at the final summons ? Speculation has been 
busy with this problem for long generations; has been al- 



XII 


PREFACE. 


ways baffled; lias never had the sense to perceive, or the 
candor to admit, that the difficulty was entirely one of its 
own gratuitous creation. Still, in the orthodox creed, or 
rather in popular parlance (for real belief was “ nowhere ” 
in the matter), the soul — which nobody knew how, even 
in fancy, to dispose of in the mean while—was to be called 
up from somewhere to reinhabit pro hac vice the body, 
which it was impossible that it should find, and of which 
it could make no further use in a world that, in philosoph¬ 
ical conception, is spiritual, and, according to Scripture, is 
prohibited to flesh and blood! Endeavor to picture the 
jumble in the mind of that early Christian who framed 
the conception (and had influence enough to make after 
ages repeat it with a submission absolutely servile) of 
a scene where decayed and dispersed gaseous elements 
and atoms, collected from ages and places and combina¬ 
tions, were put together once more for one momentary 
function, and thereafter — 

A more thoughtful age will marvel — as the thought¬ 
ful of this age marvel now — that the fancy of the 
primeval savage, who buries his horse and dog, and 
spear and arrows, in the same grave with the departed 
chief, that they may be ready for him in the unseen 
hunting-grounds whither he is gone, should have been 
so nearly reproduced in the creed of the most cultivated 
nation in the most civilized age that human progress has 
yet reached. 

Other illustrations might be given; one or two may 
be just indicated here. If, as Professor Grote suggests, 



PREFACE. 


Xlll 


sympathy with all other beings in the next world will 
be indiscriminate and perfect, and “ undisguisedness ” 
therefore inevitable and absolute, it is difficult to see 
how separate entity, still more how distinct identity, is \ 
to be secured. 

“ Surely,” as the Spectator argued, “ if sympathy with 
all is perfect, one of the most effective links of conti¬ 
nuity, the limitation of sympathy, will disappear, and the 
mind understanding all, and sympathizing with all equal¬ 
ly, all the affections, as we call them, would cease, and 
all the relations of humanity be meaningless. The an¬ 
cient and beautiful thought which has cheered so many 
bereaved ones, that separation is only for a time, would 
be without object; for though we should meet again, it 
would be in relations to which the former relations would 
have no similarity. The love between parent and child, 
for example, so far as it is not the result of circumstances 
and physical similarity of constitution, — all which cir¬ 
cumstances and similarity must cease at death, — is the 
product of superior sympathy, which sympathy would be 
merged, lost in the universal sympathy of which Profes¬ 
sor Grote has spoken. It may be, of course, that the 
earthly affections are earthly, and end with earth; but 
there is no proof of that, and no reason for a suggestion 
which, besides being a melancholy one, is an additional 
difficulty in the way of continuity.” 

Then, again, if there be a hell to which any whom we 

•*Y; 

love are doomed, heaven can only be the place of per¬ 
fect happiness we picture it, on condition of a narrowing, 
a worsening, or at all events a change, in our affections 




XIV 


PKEFACE. 


and moral nature, so vast as to be fatal to genuine 
identity. 

Lastly, it would seem impossible to frame any scheme 
of a future life, at once equitable and rational, which 
should include all human beings and exclude all the 
rest of the animal creation. Those among us who are 
most really intimate with dogs, horses, elephants, and 
other elite of the fauna of the world, know that there 
are many animals far more richly endowed with those 
intellectual and moral qualities which are worth pre¬ 
serving and which imply capacity of cultivation, than 
many men, — higher, richer, and, above all, more unself¬ 
ish and devoted, and therefore, we may almost say, more 
Christian natures. I have seen, in the same day, brutes 
on the summit and men at the foot of the Great St. 
Bernard, with regard to whom no one would hesitate 
to assign to the quadruped the superiority in all that 
we desire should live. Yet, on the other hand, where 
draw the line, since admittedly the highest animals taper 
downwards, by wholly inappreciable gradations, to the 
lowest organisms of simply vegetable life ? 

Does the following suggestion by an anonymous writer 
offer a way out of the difficulty ? — “I apprehend, that if 
man’s immortality be accepted as proven, a strong pre¬ 
sumption may be thence derived in favor of the immor¬ 
tality of those creatures who attain that moral stage whereat 
man becomes an immortal being. What that stage may be 
we do not presume to guess, but we cannot suppose the 
tremendous alternative of extinction or immortality to 
be decided by arrival at any arbitrary or merely physical 



XV 


PREFACE. 

turning-point sucli as may occur at various epochs either 
before birth or at the moment of birth. We must believe 
it to be determined by entrance on some moral or mental 
stage such as may be represented by the terms Conscious¬ 
ness, Self-Consciousness, Intelligence, Power of Love, or 
the like; by the development, in short, of the mysterious 
Somewhat above the purely vegetative or animated life 
for which such life is the scaffolding. If, then (as we are 
wont to take for granted), a child of some six or eigh¬ 
teen months old be certainly an immortal being, it follows 
that the stage of development which involves immortality 
must be an early one. And if such be the case, that stage 
is unquestionably attained by animals often, and by some 
men never. 

“ I beg ‘that it may be remarked that this argument 
expressly restricts itself to the case of the higher animals, 
and thus escapes the objection which has always been 
raised to the hypothesis of the immortality of the hum¬ 
bler creatures, namely, that if we proceed a step below 
the human race we have no right to stop short of the 
oyster. I merely contend that where any animal mani¬ 
festly surpasses an average human infant in those steps 
of development which can be assumed to involve existence 
after death, then we are logically and religiously justified 
in expecting that the Creator of both child and brute will 
show no favoritism for the smooth white skin over the 
rough hairy coat.” 

Half the difficulties which lie in the way of believing 
in a Personal God as the Euler as well as Creator of the 





XVI 


PREFACE. 


universe are of our own making. They are wholly gratui¬ 
tous, and arise out of the inconsiderate and unwarranted 
use of a single word, — omnipotent. Thoughtful minds in 
all ages have experienced the most painful perplexities 
in the attempt to reconcile certain of the moral and phys¬ 
ical phenomena we see around us with the assumption of 
a Supreme Being at once All-wise, All-good, and Almighty. 
The mental history of mankind presents few sadder spec¬ 
tacles than is afforded by the acrobatic efforts, the convul¬ 
sive contortions, the almost incredible feats of subtlety 
and force, performed by piety and intelligence combined 
in this self-imposed field of conflict, — this torture-cham¬ 
ber of the soul. Thousands have there made shipwreck 
of their faith, thousands of their truthfulness and candor, 
thousands upon thousands of their peace of mind. When 
the actual facts of the moral and the natural world came 
to be fully recognized and understood, it was felt to be 
inconceivable how or why Infinite Love should have cre¬ 
ated a scene of teeming life, of which the most salient 
feature is universal conflict and universal slaughter, — 
every organic being ceaselessly occupied in trampling 
down or devouring its neighbor, and dependent for its own 
existence upon doing this successfully. It was felt to be 
equally incomprehensible that Infinite Goodness and illim¬ 
itable Power should have created a world so rife with evil, 
— into which evil entered so easily, and ruled with so 
predominant a sway. The origin and meaning of evil, 
its whence and its why, has always been the crux of the 
sincerest and profoundest thinkers, — the insoluble prob¬ 
lem of humanity. It has scattered those who have tried 




PREFACE. 


XVll 


to master it as widely as the fabled tower of Babel. Some 
it has driven into atheism, some into Manicheism, some 
into denials of the most obvious facts of life and nature, 
some into betrayals of the most fundamental principles 
of morality, some into elaborate schemes of damnation 
and redemption, which to unperverted minds seem almost 
blasphemous in their audacity. 

That problem is insoluble. Nature never truly set us 
such contradictions to reconcile. The conditions of the 
real problem have been incorrectly stated. What stata¬ 
ble reason, what quotable warrant, have we for assuming 
that the Creator w r as, or that the Supreme Being is, “ Om¬ 
nipotent ” ? The word originally implied no accurate logi¬ 
cal conception of absolute or unlimited power; but was 
used to express a relative rather than a positive idea. It 
was a natural and a fitting epithet to use towards, or of, a 
Being whose power, as compared with that of man, was 
simply immeasurable and incalculable, and might therefore 
in ordinary parlance be called “ Infinite.” Those who first 
used it and those who adopted it never thought of defin¬ 
ing the word ; and, never straining their imagination to 
dream of boundaries or limitations, spoke easily of the 
boundless and illimitable; while the incurable vulgar dis¬ 
position of uncivilized minds, to flatter the object of their 
worship, came in aid of the expression, till by degrees the 
loose language of an age which defined {precise) nothing 
was invested with the rigid formalism of an age which 
sought to define everything, and the fine, vague descrip- t, 
tion of poetic piety became the hard and therefore false 
dogma of the Scholastic creed. That omnipotence, in the 




XV111 


PREFACE. 


precise, absolute, metaphysical meaning of the word, should 
ever have been accepted as an indisputable and essential 
attribute of the Deity, is one of the most curious instances 
among the many which may be traced of the fatal facility 
with which, in theological fields, one age blindly, thought¬ 
lessly, and uninquiringly adopts the notions of its prede¬ 
cessor. 

Yet do divines even now, when they give themselves 
the trouble to question their own minds on the subject, 
really and in very truth attribute absolute omnipotence 
to the Supreme Being ? Do they believe that He can 
combine inherent contradictions ? That He can cause 
two and two to make five ? That He can enable a human 
creature to be in two places at the same instant of time ? 
If he cannot do these things (and no one will assert that 
He can), then He ivories and lives under limitations and 
conditions ; and we require no further concession than this 
to deprive the problem of the existence of evil of half its 
gloom and difficulty, and though not to solve it, at least 
to indicate that it is not inherently insoluble. We have 
only to conceive the Creator immeasurably , incalculably 
wise, beneficent, and mighty, — good and powerful to a 
degree which, in reference to human beings, may fairly 
be called infinite, but still “ conditioned,” — hampered, 
it may be, by the attributes, qualities, imperfections of 
the material on which he had to operate ; bound possibly 
by laws or properties inherent in the nature of that mate¬ 
rial, — and we descend, so to speak, into a breathable in¬ 
tellectual atmosphere at once. We need not attempt to 
conjecture what those fettering laws or attributes may be ; 



PREFACE. 


XIX 


we have only to suppose their existence, — a supposition 
jprimct facie surely more probable than its opposite,—and 
it becomes possible at once to believe in and to worship 
God, without doing violence to our moral sense, or deny¬ 
ing or distorting the sorrowful facts that surround our 
daily life. 







































TABLE OE CONTENTS, 


I. 

Realizable Ideals.. 

II. 

Malthus Notwithstanding. 

III. 

Non-survival of the Fittest .... 

IV. 

4 

Limits and Directions of Human Development . 

Y. 


/ 

/ 


The Significance of Life 


De Profundis 


• • 


VI. 


• • 


VII. 


, Elsewhere 


Appendix ...... 






23 

* 71 

109 

. 153 

197 

. 229 

259 

. 303 





I. 


REALIZABLE IDEALS. 



REALIZABLE IDEALS. 



HE contrast between the Ideal and the Actual of 


Humanity lies as a heavy weight upon all tender 


and reflective minds. Those who believe this contrast to 


be designed, incurable, and eternal are driven by their 
dreary creed to despair, to sensual or semi-sensual ego¬ 
tism, to religion, or that form of religion which is very 


nearly- irreligion. If the countless evils of life are 


irremediable, or capable only of slight and casual miti¬ 
gation ; if the swarming multitudes of our race are 
destined to remain almost as sinful, as ignorant, as 
degraded, and as wretched as at present; if the im¬ 
provements that human effort can effect upon their 
natures and their lot are to be as trifling as most 
believe in comparison with the residue of misery and 
wrong that must remain, as well as with the Possible 
that may be dreamed; — then, what is left to us but a 
selfishness more or less disguised and modified accord- 
ing to our several characters ? The Stoic will train 
himself to bear what he can, and will leave the scene 
when he can bear no longer. The cultured Epicurean 




2G 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


and wider sympathies, and to get what joy and smooth¬ 
ness he can out of life without interfering too greatly 
with the welfare of those around him. The meaner 
and coarser Egotist will seek pleasure and shun pain, 
uncontrolled even by that consideration. The Philoso¬ 
pher will speculate, in ever-growing perplexity and dark¬ 
ness, on the insoluble problem of existence, and on 
the attributes and plans of the Deity who could have 
framed so strange a world, till all faith and love dies 
out of his baffled intellect; while the Beligious man 
— religious either by instinct or by creed — will go on 
as of old, will transfer his hopes and projects to an ideal 

r— 

scene elsewhere, where he can paint any picture his fancy 
pleases on the canvas, and seek in a future existence the 
realization of those dreams of universal virtue and well¬ 
being which it seems forbidden to indulge on earth. 

But this creed has always seemed to me as irrational 
as it is sad and paralyzing, and at least as impious as it 
is unpliilosophical. It could never have been received 
as orthodox, or even as probable or natural, if Priests had 
not seen fit to congeal and stereotype into articles of 
faith the crude conceptions of some vigorous minds in 
early times, puzzling over the problem of life with only 
a few of its clearly ascertained facts and conditions before 
them. Practically it is a creed which does not go very 
deep into our innermost convictions now. Virtually we 
give it the lie or we tacitly ignore it every hour of our 
lives. Most of us believe a vast amelioration in the con¬ 
dition of the world to be attainable, both in moral and 
material things. Many of us systematically strive for 




REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


27 


this amelioration. The efforts of Government, of Legisla¬ 
tion, of Philanthropy, of Science, are all in reality directed 
to this end. We have all some ideal — though it may he 
poor, near, and partial — towards which we are pressing, 
and which we hope more or less perfectly to realize. Per¬ 
haps the actual difference between the prevalent specula¬ 
tive views on this subject is, that some of us are so much 
more sanguine than others. Some hope only to make life 
tolerable ; others trust to make it at length as perfect as in 
its Creators original scheme they believed it was designed 
to be or to become. Some believe only that a consider¬ 
able number of human evils may be materially mitigated ; 
others, more buoyant, have convinced themselves that, 
with time, patience, and intelligent exertion, every evil 
not inherent in or essential to a finite existence may be 
eliminated, and the yawning gulf between the Actual and 
the Ideal at last bridged over. 


This faith is mine. I hold it with a conviction which 
I feel for scarcely any other conclusion of the reason. It 
appears to me the only one compatible with true piety, — 
I mean with a rational conception of the attributes of the 
Creator; for I can perceive no beauty and no religion in 
the notion that God placed us in this world only that we 
might be forever working for and hankering after another. 


It appears to me, also, — in spite of the clouds and dark¬ 
ness which are round about us, — the only one which 
reflection and reason will sanction. I am not prepared to 
give up this life as “ a bad job,” and to look for reward, 
compensation, virtue, and happiness solely to another. I 
distinctly refuse to believe in inevitable evils. I recognize 




23 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


in the rectification of existing wrong and the remedy of 
prevailing wretchedness “ the work which is given us to 
do.” For this we are to toil; and not to toil in vain. 
After this we are to aspire, and not to have our aspira¬ 
tions forever mocked by the impossibility of their final 
realization, 

“ To seek, to find, to strive, and not to yield.” 

Disease, destitution, endemic misery, certainly — sin 
and suffering of nearly every sort, probably and mainly — 
lie at our door, at the door of the aggregate of our race, at 
that of our ancestors or at our own; and I hold that what 
man has caused man may cure. Accidents and deatli will 
still remain with the natural but unexaggerated conse¬ 
quences they entail. But how small a residuum should 
we have to trace to unavoidable accidents, if we were only 
as wise and strong as we might ideally become, and how 
little of this residuum could fitly be called “ evil,” we can 
as yet only guess. Whether Death be indeed an “ evil ” 
we need not discuss, for Death is the very condition of our 
existence here ; yet, if it only took its proper position as 
one among the many occurrences of life, and only came 
(as in the ideal state I contemplate it only would come) 
when it was due, in the fulness of time, we should be 
amazed to find how rarely it was repined at or unwel¬ 
comed, either by the recipients or the spectators of the 
summons. 

The true way to realize to our own minds the curability 
of all the ills which humanity, individually and collec¬ 
tively, groans under, is to take them one by one, or a few 



REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


29 


of them as samples, in a colloquial fashion, and ask our¬ 
selves if there he any one which must or need have been, 
which in its inception might not have been avoided, which, 
in fact, is not distinctly and indisputably traceable to our 
contravention (through ignorance or wilfulness) of the 
laws of Nature which lie plain (or discoverable) before 
us; the physical laws on which health depends, the moral 
laius on which happiness depends, and the social and eco¬ 
nomic laius on which plenty and comfort depend. A very 
superficial survey will bring us to the conclusion, which 
the most profound investigation will only serve to deepen 
into settled conviction, that the world is so constituted 
that if we were consistently intelligent and morally right 
we should be socially and physically happy. We have, 
unquestionably, a terrible inheritance of ancestral errors 
to redeem, obstacles to remove, mischiefs to undo; but 
the recuperative powers of nature are astonishing and 
nearly inexhaustible, and we only require steadily to go 
right at once and henceforth, in order erelong to cancel 
the consequences of having gone wrong for such countless 
generations. 

The evils of our actual social condition may be classed 
under three heads : pain and disease, destitution, and vice 
or crime. We believe that all three may be, if not alto¬ 
gether eliminated, yet reduced to a minimum that would 
be easily dealt with and easily borne; and those will be 
most inclined to agree with us who reflect, first, how curi¬ 
ously the three causes of our sufferings mutually aid and 
aggravate each other; and secondly, with what strange, 
ingenious, obstinate perversity we have long labored 



30 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


individually and collectively, by law and habit, by action 
and by abstinence — to foster and propagate them all. 

I. Consider for a moment how vast an amount of our 
personal misery, to say nothing of actual sin and of the 
wretchedness which our consequent ill-temper brings on 
others, arises from Dyspepsia. Perhaps this malady is 
answerable, directly or indirectly, for more unhappiness, 
and does more to lower the general tone and average of 
human enjoyment, than any other. We all of us know 
something of it, many of us know it well; we can esti¬ 
mate in some measure how much the cheerfulness and 
brightness of our daily life is impaired by its pernicious 
prevalence, how it saps good spirits, how it sours good 
temper. Well! how obvious are its causes; in most in¬ 
stances how possible its cure ? How many of us toil half 
our life to earn it, begin early in its cultivation, dig for it 
as for hid treasures ? We generally lay the foundation 
in childhood, or in our first youth, by reckless and igno¬ 
rant self-indulgence, — the fault of parents and teachers, 
you will say, and what they could have checked in time 
had they known and valued the laws of physiology. True, 
but we ourselves are, or have been, or will be, those very 
parents and teachers. Then, do we not ourselves commit 
much the same follies as our children ? When we eat, as 
we habitually do, more than is good for us ; when we eat, 
as most of us do, what we know will disagree with us; 
when the pleasures of the palate tempt us to do more 
than satisfy our hunger or recruit our strength; when we 
drink alcohol, not because we need it, but because we like 
it; when we take a second glass, not because a second 



REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


31 


was required, but because the first was very good ; when 
smoking becomes a regular habit, instead of an occasional 
indulgence ; in all these cases we are sowing seeds for an 
inevitable harvest, we are diligently earning our wages 
and incurring a recorded obligation. If only all wages 
were as well earned, and all debts as certain to be paid ! 
When we sit lazily in our arm-chair under circumstances 
which indicate that we ought to be in active exercise ; 
when we sit in close rooms and in a vitiated atmosphere, 
instead of breathing the clear air of heaven ; when we go 
on toiling and thinking long after our sensations warn us 
that we have expended the income and are drawing on the 
capital of our cerebral strength; whenever, in a word, we 
neglect the plainest physiological laws (which it is diffi¬ 
cult not to read whenever our attention is drawn to them), 
then we are laying the foundation of that functional 
disorder of the digestive organs which entails so certain 
and so sad a penalty. I am sceptical about stomachic 
ailments which a man has done nothing to deserve. I 
scarcely believe in any which either he or his progenitors 
have not worked hard to generate. I believe, moreover, 
that those are few which, however induced originally, may 
not be cured or kept in bounds, even after mature age is 
reached, by*sedulous care scientifically directed. We are 
most of us familiar with the case of Cornaro, who, awaken¬ 
ing at forty years of age to the consciousness of a shattered 
constitution, yet contrived, by sagacious observation and 
incessant vigilance, to recover the tone of an outraged and 
enfeebled stomach, and lived in laughing comfort to a 
green old age. 



32 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


Again: — few maladies are more distressing, nor, we 
fear, more upon the increase, than diseases of the heart.* 
Nearly all these, it is now understood, where no heredi¬ 
tary predisposition is responsible, may be traced, either to 
the high pressure and rapid pace of life generally and in 
almost all professions, or to violent and excessive muscular 
exertion in youth, such as physiological knowledge would, 
if consulted, at once condemn. Where such disorders are 
inherited, the tendency may usually be traced to similar 
neglect of natural laws by parents or ancestors. The 
same may be said of the three terrible and allied maladies 
which so extensively corrupt and undermine the health 

* “ The tendency of modern investigation into the influence of 
civilization on longevity seems to show a twofold series of agencies 
at work. On the one hand, sanitary improvements and the lessened 
mortality from epidemics undoubtedly tend to diminish the average 
death-rates; but, on the other hand, there is practically much less 
improvement in total death-rates than might be expected if these 
ameliorating causes were not counterbalanced by the increasing 
fatality of other classes of disease, such as diseases of the brain and 
heart. It is important to recognize the precise facts. The excess 
may, probably, to some extent, be regarded as an unavoidable result 
of the great mental strain and hurried excitement of these times, in 
which steam and electricity mark time for us, in an overcrowded 
community, where competition is carried to the highest point, and 
where the struggle for existence, not to say for intellectual and 
other distinction, is carried on with sleepless and exhausting energy. 
But an evil recognized is sometimes half cured; and the intellectual 
classes, looking at figures such as those Dr. Quinn has displayed at 
his interesting Lumlcian Lectures, at the College of Physicians, on 
Diseases of the Walls of the Heart, may well consider the propriety 
of attending to the hygiene of their lives, as well as of their houses; 





REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


of the English nation, make so many lives miserable, and 
so many deaths premature; viz., consumption, scrofula, 
and gout. The predisposition to these is often, usually 
perhaps, an inheritance from progenitors who have ig¬ 
nored or set at naught the most obvious conditions of 
hygiene, even more recklessly than we do ; but no one who 
knows how latent tendencies are brought out, and the 
seeds of disease fostered and matured by bad air, un¬ 
wholesome dwellings, and personal excess, will doubt that 
“ this man has sinned ” as well as his parents for this 
thing to have come upon him. The inherited constitu¬ 
tion is no doubt a faulty one, but probably the most ex¬ 
perienced physicians will estimate most highly how much 

and to remember that, to enjoy and benefit by even pure air, soil, 
and water, they must avoid disabling heart and brain by the inces¬ 
sant labors which too often make useful lives joyless, and embitter 
the harvesting of the crop which has been too diligently sown. 
These warning figures tell that, during the last twenty years, the 
total of deaths of males at all ages from heart disease has increased 
in number from 5,746 in 1851 to 12,428 in 1870. The percentage 
of deaths from heart disease for 1,000 of population living was .755 
between the years 1851 and 1855 ; it has risen to 1.085 from 1866 
to 1870. This increase, it must be observed too, has taken place 
wholly in connection with the working years of active social life. 
There is no change in the percentage of deaths from this cause in 
males under 25 years of age. Between 20 and 45 years of age it has 
risen from .553 to .709, and that almost exclusively in males, for 
there is almost no increase in the percentage of females dying from 
heart disease during the 25 years of life from 21 to 45. These 
figures convey their own lesson, and warn us to take a little more 
care not to kill ourselves for the sake of living.” — British Medical 
Journal. 

2 * 


C 




34 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


may be done to correct and counteract tlie fault by care¬ 
ful avoidance of all unsanitary conditions, by fresh air, 
suitable nourishment, and habitual temperance. Three 
generations of wholesome life might suffice to eliminate 
the ancestral poison, for the vis mcclicatrix natural has 
wonderful efficacy when allowed free play; and perhaps 
the time may come when the worst cases shall deem it a 
plain duty to curse no future generations with the dam- 
nosa hereditcts which has caused such bitter wretchedness 
to themselves. 

It is only now that we are beginning to realize how vast 
a proportion both of our illnesses and deaths are due to 
purely and easily preventable causes, and the knowledge 
has not yet fairly stirred us into action. It is calculated 

— and the estimate is probably below the truth — that 
in this country 100,000 deaths annually can be traced to 
zymotic diseases and epidemics, generated or propagated 
distinctly by foul air, defective water, and pernicious food, 

— to filth, noxious gases, and the like, — all of which 
originators and agencies might be extinguished or neu- 
tralized by prompt and energetic obedience to well- 
known sanitary laws. It is needless to go into any de¬ 
tails on so threadbare a topic. It is certain, and will not 
be denied, that, for example, to take the metropolis alone, 
if unwholesome overcrowding were prevented by an ade¬ 
quate supply of dwellings for the poor; and if all those 
dwellings were well drained and ventilated, and furnished 
with an ample supply of good water, not only might pes¬ 
tilences and epidemics be almost certainly exterminated, 
but a number of other evils, now acting and reacting on 





REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


35 


each other, would he eliminated or enormously mitigated. 
First of all, the craving for strong drink, so constantly 
created and stimulated almost into a passion by breathing 
fetid air, would be removed, and thus the intemperance 
arising from that cause would be cured, and the destitu¬ 
tion, brutality, crime, and sickness thence arising would 
be subtracted from the sum of human suffering. Next, 
that further amount of drinking which is incidental to 
the habit among workingmen of frequenting public- 
houses because their own houses offer them no com¬ 
fortable, warm, cheerful room to sit in, would be mini¬ 
mized : and few know for how much drunkenness this 
cause is indirectly and in its origin answerable. Then, 
again, with the universal establishment of wholesome 
and decent dwellings for the poor, we should escape, 
not only the 20,000 or 30,000 premature deaths caused 
by the want of such, and the sapped health and strength 
of thousands more, but the destitution, misery, and in¬ 
sufficient nourishment of countless families where pre- 
ventible maladies have swept away the bread-winner, 
and, in consequence and in addition, at least one half 
the pauperism which is eating like a gangrene into the 
moral and material well-being of the country. For—and 
this is the encouraging feature of this matter — amend¬ 
ment and reform in one point brings amendment and 
progress in all others. You cannot improve dwellings 
without, pro tanto, lessening intemperance and vice; you 
cannot diminish drunkenness without diminishing pau¬ 
perism and brutality, disease and death ; you cannot give 
people comfortable houses, without sobriety, health, edu- 



36 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


cation, virtually if not actually increased wages, and 
raised moral feeling, inevitably and by a thousand in¬ 
direct channels, advancing also, and aiding the good 
work in inodes as yet undreamed of. Every valuable 
influence put in operation is a potent ally of every 
other. If a man’s or a nation’s face is once set in the 
right direction and progress once commenced, unseen 
influences close in on all sides, half insensibly, to aid 
the onward march. 

Look for a moment, very briefly, at the perverse course 
we have hitherto pursued ; how we have fostered all our 
social maladies as it were with a sort of co-operative zeal; 
how we have taken every sore which plagues and cor¬ 
rodes our body politic, and not merely “ let it alone this 
year and that year also,” but “ dug about and dunged it,” 
as if we were determined it should bear ample fruit; 
and this not from viciousness, but sometimes from igno¬ 
rance, sometimes from good feeling gone astray, some¬ 
times from selfishness and careless neglect, usually from 
sheer stupidity. For generations we have seen that most 
ominous of all symptoms, that most dangerous if most 
natural of all tendencies in a productive and advancing 
country, the concentration of the population into great 
towns, without — we do not say any attempt to control 
or counteract it, but — any effort, or any adequate effort, 
to provide for it, or forestall its consequences. We have 
scarcely dreamed of the necessity for expanding our 
social garments as our social body has grown beneath 
them. The same municipal government — or rather the 
same municipal makeshifts and neglect — which sufficed 




REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


37 


for the village or the country town, we have fancied 
would answer for the vast manufacturing hive. The 
same drainage system, the same sort of water supply, 
the same haphazard mode of multiplying buildings 
which did for a town of 5,000 inhabitants, have been 
applied to the same town grown to 50,000. Look at 
London, which needed more care, skill, science, admin¬ 
istrative wisdom than any other city, and as the seat 
of wealth, rank, and the central government might have 
been expected to receive more, and consider its contriv¬ 
ances for obtaining gas, water, drainage; look at its rook¬ 
eries and its alleys ; its squalid dens ; its mingled luxury 
and destitution ; its no government; its provision for fire, 
and against fire. 

Look at pauperism, how we have fed and fostered it; 
how we shrank from and spoiled and neutralized the 
one really scientific piece of legislation which England 
can boast of, the New Poor Law as first proposed; how 
we have kept up and added to those old medievally con¬ 
ceived charities which might have been innoxious under 
altogether different conditions, but which now make men¬ 
dicancy almost the most profitable trade a miscellaneous 
town population can pursue. Consider how, when a 
thorough knowledge and a close and searching investi¬ 
gation into every case of alleged want offer the only 
possible means of controlling pauperism and unmasking 
imposture, we, in our miserable vestry spirit of wasteful 
parsimony, make all such investigations a mockery and 
an impossibility by assigning hundreds of families to one 
relieving officer and an imbecile Board. Consider how 




38 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


public sympathy has been perpetually enlisted on the 
wrong side by the mingled stupidity and brutality of 
Boards of Guardians, unjust alike to the rate-payer and 
the poor, who at the same moment shocked all decent 
feeling by the cruelty and stinginess of their treatment 
of the sick and aged, and outraged all common-sense 
by the laxity and feebleness of their dealing with the 
able-bodied incorrigible pauper, the systematic vagrant, 
and the drunken casual. Lastly, read and think how 
the sin and folly of the charitable and religious have 
combined to convert the East End of London into about 
the most unmanageable heap of squalor, destitution, 
drunkenness, imposture, and artificial wretchedness on 
earth : — and then some faint idea may be formed of 
how this monster evil of our country might be got 
under by sound treatment, from watching how it has 
been made to flourish under all this lavish and perverse 
manuring. 

Again: we have fostered our criminal population just 
as we have fostered our pauper population, till this also 
has become a flourishing established class, to be numbered, 
not by tens, but by hundreds of thousands. For genera¬ 
tions we have labored with our usual injurious and ever- 
varying perversity. There is scarcely a single contradic¬ 
tory mistake that we have not committed. It was long 
before scientific inquiry and reflection let in any light 
upon the subject; and when light dawned at last, folly and 
sentimentality refused to follow the guidance of science. 
For generations our punishments were so savage that ju¬ 
ries would not convict. Our constabulary were so scanty 



REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


39 


and inefficient that crime had practically scarcely any 
public foe ; and when, less than fifty years ago, something 
like an adequate police began to be set on foot, there was 
an instant clamor that the liberties of the subject were in 
danger. Due restraint on known and habitual criminals 
is still impeded in the name of the same much-abused 
phrase; and burglars and felons are allowed to walk abroad 
after repeated convictions, because the freedom of English¬ 
men is too sacred to be touched. The most mawkish sen¬ 
timentality is suffered to prevent the infliction of the only 
punishments which are really dreaded by the hardened 
and the ruffianly, as well as those which alone could res¬ 
cue and restore the incipient criminal. We will not hang 
the murderer, and have only lately and gingerly begun to 
flog the garroter and the mutilator; nor will we give ade¬ 
quately long terms of imprisonment to the less atrocious 
and confirmed class of malefactors. We persist, in spite 
of all warning and of all experience, in turning loose our 
villains on the world, time after time, as soon as a moder¬ 
ate term of detention has finished their education and 
defined their future course. All who have really studied 
the question feel satisfied that professional crime, and 
the class that habitually live by violation of the law, 
might be wellnigh exterminated by the perpetual seclusion 
of the incorrigible, and by the infliction of the special 
penalties which are truly deterrent. Yet still we go on 
from day to day making the criminals as comfortable 
as we can, pitying them and petting them when an 
opportunity occurs, raising an outcry against any pen¬ 
alties which are painful, and thinking we have done 



40 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


enough, and arguing as if we had done all we had a 
right to do, if we tie the hands of the most practised rob¬ 
ber and ruffian for a time. All wholesomeness of notion 
in reference to this subject seemed to have gone out of 
us, and to be replaced by sentiment at once shallow and 
morbid. We have been feeling towards the criminal 
neither as Christians, nor as statesmen, nor as philoso¬ 
phers, nor even as men of the world. We neither abhor 
him, nor cure him, nor disarm him. We do not act either 
on the reformatory, or the retributive, or the purely defen¬ 
sive principle, but on a feeble muddle of all three. So he 
lives, and thrives, and multiplies, nourished in the bosom 
of the silly society on which he preys. 

Consider again what might fairly be expected to be the 
present state of the civilized world if the whole influence 
of the Church had been persistently and sagaciously di¬ 
rected towards the improvement of the moral and material 
^ condition of humanity on this earth, instead of towards 
the promulgation of an astounding scheme for securing it 
against eternal torments in a future existence; if, in a word 
[universal not selfish], well-being here, instead of what 
is called salvation hereafter, had been the aim and study 
of the great organization called the Church, and of the 
hundreds of thousands of teachers, both orthodox and 
unorthodox, who for centuries have ostensibly lived and 
worked for no other end. It would be rash to say that, 
on a balance of considerations, the Church and the clergy 
of all denominations have, in the course of ages, done more 
harm than good to the Christian world; but probably it 
would be rasher still to assert the contrary. Certain it is, 





REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


41 


that in many most material points they have worked 
counter to the progress of mankind in material and social 
welfare, and in those departments of moral improvement 
which spring therefrom. They have inculcated almsgiving 
on the rich, and (by implication, at least in the matter of 
early marriages) improvidence on the poor, and have thus 
been the abettors of incalculable mischief. And they have 
been able to quote texts in defence of both misteachings. 
To the rich they have said, “ Give to him that asketh of 
thee ” ; to the poor, “ Take no thought for the morrow, 
for the morrow shall take thought for the things of it¬ 
self.” * In former days they whetted the angry passions 
of men by consecrating them and enlisting them in the 
service of the Church, and are answerable for countless 
cruelties and crimes, perhaps for the very worst that have 
disgraced history. Something of this tendency, perhaps, 
still remains, and neither charity nor education can do 
the good they might because theology stands in the way.f 

* “ Another habit of the same category is that of marrying early 
and in trust. Religion has looked favorably on this habit. ‘ God 
himself bade men be fruitful and multiply/ Let young people who 
fall in love marry, or they may do worse. ‘God will provide food 
for the mouths he sends into the world/ Our Lord, it is urged, ex¬ 
horted his disciples to a simple dependence on the heavenly Father 
who feeds the sparrows, and condemned anxious care about the mor¬ 
row. To discourage early marriages on prudential grounds has been 
stigmatized by religious persons as a hard, godless, immoral policy.” 
— Rev. Llewellyn Davies , “ Cont. Rev .,” Jan. 1871. 

t This is the result of much thought and practical experience in 
a singularly careful, intelligent, and pious man. “ In charity as in 
education , the supreme evil is religion, — not true religion, not that 



42 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


The entire theory of the Church is antagonistic to any 
concentrated or consistent scheme for raising the earthly 
condition of the suffering masses; and if practice in this 
respect has been sounder than theory, the manifest incon¬ 
sistency of the two has introduced the further evil of a 
fearful and fundamental insincerity. All this has been 
so well put by other writers that I shall prefer their words 
to my own. 

“ With regard to the influence of Christianity, it would 
seem that there is much exaggeration in the views enter¬ 
tained upon that subject, and even a misconception of its 
true stand-point. The recent arguments upon this sub¬ 
ject would, in fact, have been scarcely intelligible to the 
early fathers and apologists, and if they had understood 
they would have rejected them. Their conception of 
Christianity was that it .was a preparation for a com¬ 
ing age, and also for another world, not an instrument 
for the improvement of the present; and this still con¬ 
tinues to be the prevalent opinion among those who con¬ 
sider themselves to be especial Christians, members of 
the body and heirs of the kingdom of Christ. To be 
wise, or learned, or rich, or peaceful, or happy, was for 
the individual believer rather a snare and a peril than an 
advantage. The kingdom of Christ was not of this world, 
and its results were not to be looked for here, unless in 
so far as they were realized by faith. The friendship of 

love which is the fulfilling of the law, but that vile devil-coined 
counterfeit which the so-called religious world has stamped with its 
hall-mark, and agrees to receive as legal tender in place of the true 
metal.” — Letters of Edward Denison, p. 229. 



REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


43 


tills world was enmity with God. If the Christian found 
himself in harmony with circumstances; if a uniform 
course of steady and well-directed industry, and an unself¬ 
ish regard for the rights and feelings of others, had pro¬ 
duced their natural consequences of material well-being 
and social respect, this proof of conformity to the world 
would at least raise a presumption that he had, in some 
degree, deserved the enmity of God; at the lowest, these 
temporal blessings might induce him to rest satisfied with 
his present lot, might dim the eye of faith, and weaken 
the aspirations or even change the object of hope. These 
moral virtues, too, were insignificant; they might be splen¬ 
did sins. Without faith it was impossible to please God, 
and with faith all other excellences were at least impli¬ 
citly connected; and considering the utter insignificance, 
on the Christian scheme, of the present life as compared 
with the eternitv that was to follow,.no inconvenience or 
privation or suffering was worthy to be regarded for a mo¬ 
ment, if its existence removed an obstacle to the fuller 
growth of the inward and spiritual life. 

“ To improve the moral or physical aspect of society 
was, therefore, no part of the Christian scheme. That it 
should, in fact, have done so was no subject of congratu¬ 
lation, but rather to be feared and possibly to be regret¬ 
ted ; at any rate, it was an absolutely insignificant result. 
If one soul was lost in consequence, what would the 
earthly happiness and virtue of millions weigh if bal¬ 
anced against that eternal misery; and if not, what did 
it matter at the best ? No more than a single smile of 
an infant in its cradle, procured by some momentary pleas- 




44 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


ure, as compared with the happiness or misery of its whole 
future life. There may he a question whether this was 
the teaching of Jesus, but there can be no question that 
this is the spirit of orthodox Christianity.” * 

Another writer observes : — 

“ In our perplexity we naturally direct our attention 
first to the Church, which we have been taught to look up 
to as our guide and instructor in all our most important 
concerns. What has been its action on the progress of 
the world and the happiness of mankind ? Startling as 
the avowal must appear, we can hardly help arriving at 
the conclusion that the Church has been rather a hin¬ 
drance than a helper in the great business of humanity; 
and that she is, in a great degree, responsible for the fact 
that so small progress has been made. 

« « * • • 

“ Unhappily, the theory on which the Church proceeds 
is calculated rather to impede than to promote man’s hap¬ 
piness and well-being in this world. It assumes that this 
world is a fallen world, and man’s position in it merely a 
state of preparation for another and better state of exist¬ 
ence ; that man’s happiness here is a matter comparatively 
of little moment, and that his main business on earth is 

to qualify himself for happiness in that future state. 

“To employ the faculties that God has given us in 
endeavoring to discover His laws as displayed in His works, 
and to do His will by devoting all our energies to improve 
the condition of mankind and to alleviate the misery so 

* “ The Jesus of History,” p. 13, by Sir It. D. Hanson, Chief Jus¬ 
tice of South Australia. 




REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


45 


prevalent in the world, and which mainly arises from ig¬ 
norance or neglect of those laws ; to endeavor by honest 
labor to raise ourselves in the scale of society; this, it is 
said, although it may be conducive to man’s happiness 
and well-being here, is not the way to prepare for a future 
life. We are to renounce this world, to lay up no treas- 
ures here. Riches are the root of evil; the elements of 
progress and civilization are matters of secondary moment. 
Our task here is to endeavor, by patience, humility, repent¬ 
ance, faith in the Redeemer, and through the efficacy of 
the Sacraments of the Church, to secure eternal happiness 
in Heaven. This is the assumption of the Church. If it 
be correct, the more zealous the clergy are, and the more 
faithful in the discharge of their duties, the more will they 
endeavor to withdraw attention from what concerns the 
temporal interests of those committed to their charge, in 
order to fix it the more steadily on that which alone, if 
the Church’s theory be true, is of real worth, — the secur¬ 
ing of their happiness in a future life. 

. “ It may perhaps be said, that though this is the theory 
of the Church, yet, in practice, it does not discourage a 
reasonable attention to the affairs of this world ; and it is 
true that there is a great deal of inconsistency between 
the theory and the practice of the Church. The clergy do 

"\ ''"V 

not themselves practise, nor do they expect their hearers 

• 

to practise, all that the theory of the Church requires them 
to profess. There is a great deal of conventional insincer¬ 
ity ; but this very insincerity is one of the serious evils 
arising out of the artificial system with which the Church 
h encumbered. It goes far to explain the discredit into 



4G 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


which the Church has fallen, with the working-classes 
especially, and the powerlessness of the clergy to make 
any impression by their teaching.” * 

Once more : — 

“ As regards human life in general, it may be said that 
the industrial theory of it has been treated for the most 
part as a rival, if not as an enemy, by theological inter¬ 
ests. The old traditional teaching of the Church repre¬ 
sented it as the business of the Christian to prepare him¬ 
self for the life to come. The things of this life were 
snares which he ought, as far as possible, to shun. The 
love of money was the root of all evil; it was extremely 
difficult for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heav¬ 
en. The man who accumulated wealth was a fool not to 
remember that at any moment his soul might be required 
of him. Mediaeval theology, in an uncompromising spirit, 
asserted the superior credit and reasonableness of a sim¬ 
ple ascetic life. It was better that a man should renounce 
wealth, marriage, comfort, should withdraw himself from 
the occupations and interests of secular society, and de¬ 
vote himself wholly to the pursuit of salvation. Protes¬ 
tantism recoiled from such a condemnation of the present 
world, and its trumpet has given an uncertain sound on 
this question. But its attitude towards industrialism and 
secular civilization has been generally that of toleration 
and compromise. Its theology has recommended detach¬ 
ment from the world in the interest of the soul and its 
salvation. Life is still pictured as a pilgrimage through a 

* “ The Problem of the World and the Church,” by a Septuage¬ 
narian, p. 7. 



REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


47 


trying wilderness to Paradise. But for various reasons 
of necessity and expediency, Christians may accommodate 
themselves innocently and judiciously to the exigencies 
of this world. Making money is a thing of the earth, 
earthy; but money is a powerful instrument, and true 
Christians will not forego the opportunities it gives for 
promoting the cause of religion.” * 

It will be admitted at once, that in all the matters 
above referred to we shall see our blunders, and sooner or 
later rectify them, and that a vast improvement in the 
general aspect of social life will be the result. But it may 
be objected, — and the objection indisputably expresses 
the general sentiment, — after all, even when we have 
come to discern what is wise and right, and to understand 
thoroughly the unswerving laws which determine political 
and individual well-being, and estimate adequately the 
consequences of their neglect or violation, the old, eternal, 
insuperable difficulty will remain to confront and dis¬ 
hearten us. Our passions will be still in the ascendant, 
speaking in a louder tone than either interest or duty, and 
diverting both personal and collective action from that 
course which alone could realize our visions of attainable 
good. The ineradicable selfishness of man, the ambition 
of individuals, of nations, of rulers, the sexual passion 
(perhaps the most disturbing and unruly of all), will con¬ 
tinue to lay waste your ideal future as they have laid 
waste the melancholy past. 

It may be so. But there are three sets of considerations 
* Rev. Llewellyn Davies, “Cont. Rev./’ Jan., 1871. 




48 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


which point to a more hopeful issue : the inevitably vast 
change which cannot fail to ensue when all the countless 
influences which hitherto have been working perversely 
in a wrong direction shall turn their combined forces the 
other way ; the reciprocally reacting and cumulative oper¬ 
ation of each step in the right course ; and the illimitable 
generations and ages which yet lie before humanity ere 
the goal be reached. Our present condition no doubt is 
discouraging enough ; we have been sailing for centuries 
on a wrong tack ; hut we are beginning, though only just 
beginning, to put about the ship. What may we not 
rationally hope for, when the condition of the masses 
shall receive that concentrated and urgent attention which 
has hitherto been directed, permanently if not exclusively, 
to furthering the interests of more favored ranks ? What, 
when charity, which for centuries has been doing mis¬ 
chief, shall begin to do good ? What, when the countless 
pulpits that, so far back as history can reach, have been 
preaching Catholicism, Anglicanism, Presbyterianism, Cal¬ 
vinism, Wesleyanism, shall set to work to preach Chris¬ 
tianity at last ? I)o we ever even approach to a due es¬ 
timate of the degree in which every stronghold of vice or 
folly overthrown exposes, weakens, and undermines every 
other; of the extent to which every improvement, social, 
moral, or material, makes every other easier; of the count¬ 
less ways in which physical reform reacts on intellectual 
and ethical progress ? 

What a gradual transformation — transformation almost 
reaching to transfiguration — will not steal over the aspect 
of civilized communities when, by a few generations, dur- 



REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


49 


ing which hygienic science and sense shall have been in 
the ascendant, the restored health of mankind shall have 
corrected the morbid exaggeration of our appetites ; when 
the more questionable instincts and passions, less and less 
exercised and stimulated for centuries, shall have faded 
into comparative quiescence ; when the disordered consti- 
tutions, whether diseased, criminal, or defective, which 
now spread and propagate so much moral mischief, shall 
have been eliminated; when sounder systems of educa¬ 
tion shall have prevented the too early awakening of nat¬ 
ural desires; when more rational because higher and so¬ 
berer notions of what is needful and desirable in social life, 
a lower standard of expenditure, wiser simplicity in living, 
shall have rendered the legitimate gratification of those 
desires more easy; when little in comparison shall be 
needed for a happy home, and that little shall have become 
generally attainable by frugality, sobriety, and toil ? * It 

* Reflect for a moment on these two examples, applicable to dif¬ 
ferent classes. The (secondary) causes and encouragements of intem¬ 
perance are bad air and unwholesome diet, sometimes a bad consti¬ 
tution, which create a craving for drink ; bad company, which 
tempts to it ; undue facilities, which conduce to it; adulteration 
of liquors, which exasperates their pernicious influences ; squalid 
homes, which drive men forth for cheerfulness ; and the want of 
other comfortable places of resort, which leaves them no refuge but 
the publican’s parlor. What, again, are the consequences of intem¬ 
perance ? Poverty, squalid homes, brutality, crime, and the trans¬ 
mission of vitiated constitutions. Who can say that all these are 
not preventible ? Sound administration might prevent the bad air 
of unventilated dwellings, the undue multiplication and constant 
accessibility of gin and beer shops, and the poisoning of wholesome 

drink. Sound charity might establish or promote the establishment 

3 D 



50 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


surely is not too Utopian to fancy that our children, or 
our grandchildren at least, may see a civil state in which 
wise and effective legislation, backed by adequate admin¬ 
istration, shall have made all violation of law, all habitual 
crime, obviously, inevitably, and instantly a losing game, 
and therefore an extinct profession; when property shall 
be respected and not coveted, because possessed or attain¬ 
able by all; when the distribution of wealth shall receive 
both from the Statesman and the Economist that sedulous 
attention which is now concentrated exclusively on its 

of workmen’s clubs, as rival scenes of cheerfulness and comfort. 
These, in time, would enormously reduce destitution, and render 
home more home-like ; and brutality, crime, and vitiated constitu¬ 
tions would naturally diminish pan passu, till the residuum would 
become so small in amount that it could be easily dealt with. For 
let us never forget that it is the magnitude and extent of our social 
evils that render them so hopeless and unmanageable. 

Then, again, look at that sad blot upon our civilization which we 
have got to call the Social Evil par excellence. What are its second¬ 
ary causes ? The early awakening of desire by our vicious and care¬ 
less system of education ; our vast population of idle men, whose 
passions are never sobered by the sanitary blessing of severe toil, 
and to hundreds of thousands of whom (soldiers and sailors) celibacy 
is a necessary condition ; our want of adequate training and diffused 
information and legislative and administrative facilities, which pre¬ 
vent those for whom there is no adequate opening to employment 
and success here from seeking it abroad ; our self-indulgence and 
intemperate habits, which waste the earnings that, well husbanded, 
might have provided means for an early marriage and a happy home ; 
the wretched notions of luxury which prevail through so many strata 
of society, and frighten away men and women alike from a blended 
life that would entail frugality and self-denial ; the number of wo¬ 
men whom our blunders and false notions make redundant, and the 



REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


51 


acquisition ; and when, though relative poverty may still 
remain, actual and unmerited destitution shall everywhere 
be as completely eliminated as it has been already in one 
or two fortunate and limited communities. Tew probably 
have at all realized how near the possibility at least of 
this consummation may be. An intellectual and moral 
change, — both within moderate and attainable limits, — 
and the adequate and feasible education of all classes, 
would bring it about in a single generation. If our work¬ 
ingmen were as hardy, enduring, and ambitious as the 

yet greater number whom they make destitute and dependent; and, 
finally, our utterly unsound moral perceptions on this matter. The 
working of the social evil is simply and obviously to aggravate all. 
these things. But is it quite hopeless to amend our education ? Is 
not the probable tendency of events to diminish the number of mere 
fruges consumere nati .by a fairer distribution of wealth ; and may we 
not hope that we are looking, if not actually marching, towards a 
sounder public opinion that will render idleness and dissipation dis¬ 
creditable ? Is it utterly irrational to anticipate the day when the 
cessation of wars will disband armies, or convert them into a mere 
police force, to the members of which domestic life will be no im¬ 
possibility ? Are we not already here and there beginning to per¬ 
ceive that large means are not absolutely essential to a comfortable 
and even refined menage ? And the moment simplicity and fru¬ 
gality of living become fashionable, creditable, or even moderately 
general, at that moment it will become easy, and comparatively 
early marriages will be feasible without imprudence. When this is 
achieved, voluntary celibacy will become discreditable, redundant 
women will be absorbed, and those whose poverty places them now 
at the mercy of the tempter will become fewer and fewer as the dther 
social improvements which we anticipate begin to operate, and the 
premature deaths of the bread-winners disappear before sanified cit¬ 
ies and vanishing intemperance. 



52 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


better specimens of the Scotch peasantry, and valued in¬ 
struction as much, and if they were as frugal, managing, 
and saving as the French peasantry, the work would be 
very near completion. If -any doubt this, let them care¬ 
fully ponder the lessons taught experimentally in such 
narratives as the “ Memoirs of William and Eobert Cham¬ 
bers,” and Somerville’s “Autobiography of a Working 
Man,” and the facts set forth in “ The Proletariat on a 
False Scent” (“Quarterly Eeview,” January, 1872), and 
they will doubt no longer. 

It may sound romantic, at the end of a decade which 
has witnessed perhaps the two most fierce and san¬ 
guinary wars in the world’s history, to hope that this 
wretched and clumsy mode of settling national quar¬ 
rels will erelong be obsolete; but no one can doubt 
tnat the commencement of wiser estimates of national 
interests and needs, the growing devastation and slaugh¬ 
ter of modern wars, the increased range and power of 

implements of destruction which, as they are employ- 

* 

able by all combatants, will grow too tremendous to be 
employed by any, and the increasing horror with which a 
cultivated age cannot avoid regarding such scenes, are 
all clear, if feeble and inchoate, indications of a ten¬ 
dency towards this blessed consummation. 

Europe and England of to-day, and America as well, 
it is too true, offer many features calculated to try 
severely our faith that the face of the civilized world 
is set towards a better day. Nous avons les defauts de 
nos qualitds. Our growing tenderness to suffering is 



REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


53 


accompanied with a corresponding gentleness towards 
wrong.* Our morality grows laxer as our hearts grow 

* The following extracts are from one of the most remarkable 
and suggestive articles I remember to have read, as well as the 
most beautiful in its turn of thought and power of expression : — 

“ There is the profoundest danger of the collapse of that highest 
personal life, the glory of which has been shown us, before the con¬ 
fusion of the half-lights and half-shadows of the new era. Com¬ 
plexity of every kind is the great condition of the new life, — 
shades of thought too complex to yield up definite opinions, — 
shades of moral obligation too complex to yield up definite axi¬ 
oms of duty, — shades of insight too various to yield up definite 
sentences of approval or condemnation for the actions of others. 
On all subjects not strictly scientific, on all those mental and moral 
questions which determine conduct and action, the growing sense 
of complexity and difficulty is rapidly producing a relaxing effect 
upon the force of individual character. In some sense men are 
blinded by excess of light. The simple old moral law, ‘ Thou shalt 
not kill,’ ‘ Thou shalt not steal,’ ‘ Thou shalt not commit adultery,’ 

‘ Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods,’ is apt to lose half its 
meaning before multitudes of distinctions which gradually shade 
off forbidden acts into the most praiseworthy and delicate senti¬ 
ments, and leave you wondering where the spirit ot the law ends 

and the letter begins. 

. 

“ There is, at all events, an immense growth of this spirit, not 
amongst those who have most hardship and suffering, but vho 
have least, — amongst those who have chiefly reaped the advan¬ 
tages of the new sciences and arts in easy life, pleasant tastes, 
languid hopes, and feeble faiths. The fear is, that if civilization 
succeeds —and we trust it will succeed —in raising the mass of 
men to the same level of comparatively satisfied material and 
intellectual wants, there will be the same disposition to subside 
into the limited life of small attainable enjoyments, and to let 



54 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


softer. We are nearly as charitable to the sinner as to 
the sufferer. We condemn nothing very bitterly. We 
punish nothing very severely. We scarcely regard any¬ 
thing as wicked which is not cruel. Our social atmos¬ 
phere is thick and hazy with insincerities and unreal¬ 
ities. We bow down before false gods and we profess 
ignoble creeds; and, what is almost worse, we neither 
heartily worship the one nor honestly believe the other. 
We are not exactly bad, but neither are we strong nor 
true. The religion we profess has for one of its most 
significant and salient features the denunciation of 
wealth as a trust or a pursuit; — Christianity condemns 
riches and the love of riches as a snare, a danger, and 
almost a sin; and even pagan-nurtured sages and states¬ 
men are never weary of pointing out how this disas¬ 
trous passion vitiates all our estimates of life and its 
enjoyments, and fosters and exasperates all our social 
sores. Yet in England and America, perhaps the two 

alone the struggles for perfect freedom and perfect life in God. 
If it were true that with the beating back of great physical wants, 
the deepest hunger of human nature is to be laid to sleep, and life 
to be frittered away in small enjoyments, no one could look upon 
human destiny without a sigh. 

“ Perhaps it may be thought almost an answer to this fear to 
point out that with the growth of the self-indulgent spirit there is 
very apt to grow also a very strong feeling of the worthlessness of 
life, — a feeling that nothing enjoyed is worth the cost of obtaining 
it, that life itself is a doubtful good, that the spring and elasticity 
of youth once over, and the sense of duty smothered in a sea of 
speculative doubt, it is rather from indolence than from love of 
life, that men prolong the dreary monotony of unsolved problems 
and ungranted prayers.” — Spectator , October 19, 1867. 



REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


55 


most sincerely Christian nations in the world, — one 
the cradle, the other the offspring, of Puritanism, —- 
the pursuit nearest to a universal one, the passion lik- 
est to a national one, is money-getting; not the effort 
after competence or comfort, but the pushing, jostling, 
trampling struggle for vast possessions or redundant 
affluence. Yet already we fancy we can see traces, 
not so much of positive reaction against these things, 
as of that sounder perception and that sick discontent 
even in success which precede reaction. Progress, too, 
is always fitful, and the errors and backslidings we see 
around us now may be merely the casual ebb of the 
advancing wave. “ Time is on our side.” We look to 
advance by slow accretions. We calculate on eras al¬ 
most geological in their duration before the full attain¬ 
ment of an ideal life on earth. The moral sense will 
have to be strengthened and purified by long centuries 
of increasing good before it can do its perfect work. 
But what are centuries in the lifetime of a race ? 
They are less than as many minutes of individual 
duration. “ La Providence a ses aises dans le temps ; elle 
fait un pas, et des siecles se trouvent ecoules.” * God, 
who spent ages in fitting the earth for the residence 
of man, may well spend ages more in fitting rectified 
man to inhabit a renovated earth. 

There are, however, a few recollections and reflec¬ 
tions which justify a fancy that possibly our steps 
forward may erelong be incomparably more rapid than 
is here supposed. The possibilities of human progress 

* Guizot, Histoire tie la Civilisation. 



56 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


— what Humanity might achieve if its known powers 
were steadily applied in a determinate and already 
indicated direction — are simply incalulable. Its actu¬ 
alities even — historically recorded or daily witnessed 

— are startling enough. Our eras of advance have 
been short and fitful; but they have been wonderful 
while they lasted, and we can assign no reason why 
they need have ceased. Look back two-and-twenty 
centuries. In about two hundred years the Athenians 
raised themselves from the conditions of a rude and 
scarcely civilized people to the highest summit which 
any nation has yet reached, — the culminating point 
of human intelligence.* Conceive that rate of progress 
continued instead of stopping short, and applied to all 
departments of man’s capacities and wants instead of 
to a few only, and what might our Eace not have 
been now ? 

Again, few phenomena are more remarkable, yet few 
have been less remarked, than the degree in which 
material civilization — the progress of mankind in all 
those contrivances which oil the wheels and promote 
the comfort of daily life — has been concentrated into 

* The summit was attained in the days of Pericles, b. c. 450. 
Grote considers that the real history of Greece began only in b. c. 
776. The Archonship of Kreon, with whom commences the 
authentic chronology of Athens, dates B. c. 683 ; but the real pro¬ 
gress of Athens is comprised between the time of Solon (594) or 
that of Pisistratus (560), and that of Pericles (450), — scarcely 
more than three generations. The grandfather was born in a rude 
age ; the grandson or great-grandson flourished in the acme of 
civilization. 




REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


57 


the present century. It is not too much to say that 
in these respects more has been done, richer and more 
prolific discoveries have been made, grander achieve¬ 
ments have been realized, in the course of the fifty or 
seventy years of our own lifetime than in all the pre¬ 
vious lifetime of the race, since states, nations, and 
politics, such as history makes us acquainted with, have 
had their being. In some points, no doubt, the opposite 
of this is true. In speculative philosophy, in poetry, 
in the arts of sculpture and painting, in the perfection 
and niceties of language, we can scarcely be said to 
have made any advance for upwards of two thousand 
years. Probably no instrument of thought and expres¬ 
sion has been or ever will be more perfect than Greek; 
no poet will surpass Homer or Sophocles; no thinker 
dive deeper than Plato or Pythagoras; no sculptor pro¬ 
duce more glorious marble conceptions than Phidias or 
Praxiteles. It may well be that David and Confucius 
and Pericles were clothed as richly and comfortably as 
George III. or Louis XVIII., and far more becomingly. 
There is every reason to believe that the dwellings of 
the rich and great among the Romans, Greeks, and 
Babylonians were as luxurious and well appointed as 
our own, as well as incomparably more gorgeous and 
enduring. It is certain that the palaces belonging to 
the nobles and monarchs of the Middle Ages — to say 
nothing of abbeys, minsters, and temples — were in 
nearly all respects equal to those erected in the pres¬ 
ent day, and in some important’ points far superior. 
But in how many other equally significant and valu- 

3 * 



58 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


able particulars has the progress of the world been not 
only concentrated into these latter days, but astound- 
ingly rapid in its march ? 

Consider only the three momentous matters of light, lo¬ 
comotion, and communication, and we shall see that this 
generation contrasts most surprisingly with the aggregate 
of the progress effected in all previous generations put 
together since the earliest dawn of authentic history. 
The lamps and torches which illuminated Belshazzar’s 
feast were probably just as brilliant, and framed out of 
nearly the same materials, as those which shone upon the 
splendid fetes of Versailles when Marie Antoinette presided 
over them, or those of the Tuileries during the Imperial 
magnificence of the First Napoleon. Pine wood, oil, and 
perhaps wax lighted the banquet-halls of the wealthiest 
nobles alike in the eighth century before Christ and in 
the eighteenth century after Christ. There was little dif¬ 
ference, except in finish of workmanship and elegance of 
design, — little, if any, advance, we mean, in the illumi¬ 
nating power, or in the source whence that power was 
drawn, — between the lamps used in the days of the 
Pyramids, the days of the Coliseum, and the days of 
Kensington Palace. Fifty years ago, that is, we burnt 
the same articles, and got about the same amount of 
light from them, as we did four thousand years ago. 
Now , we use gas of which each burner is equal to fifteen 
or twenty candles ; and when we wish for more can have 
recourse to the electric light or analogous inventions, 
which are fifty-fold more brilliant and far-reaching than 
even the best gas. The streets of cities, which from the 





REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


59 


days of Pharaoh to those of Voltaire were dim and gloomy, 
even where not wholly unlighted, now blaze everywhere 
(except in London) with something of the brilliancy of 
moonlight. In a word, all the advance that lias been 
made in these respects has been made since many of 
us were children. We remember light as it was in the 
days ol Solomon, we see it as Drummond and Faraday 
have made it. 

The same thing may be said of locomotion. Nimrod 
and Noah travelled just in the same way, and just at 
the same rate, as Thomas Assheton Smith and Mr. Coke 
of Norfolk. The chariots of the Olympic Games went 
just as fast as the chariots that conveyed our nobles to 
the Derby, "in our hot youth, when George the Third 
was King.” When Abraham wanted to send a message 
to Lot he despatched a man on horseback, who galloped 
twelve miles an hour. When our fathers wanted to 
send a message to their nephews, they could do no bet¬ 
ter, and go no quicker. When we were young, if we 
wished to travel from London to Edinburgh, we thought 
ourselves lucky if we could average eight miles an hour, 
— just as Robert Bruce might have done. Now, in our 
old age, we feel ourselves aggrieved if we do not aver- 
age forty miles. Everything that has been done in this 
line since the world began — everything, perhaps, that 
the capacities of matter and the conditions of the hu¬ 
man frame will ever allow to be done — has been done 
since we were boys. The same at sea. Probably when 
the wind was favorable, Ulysses, who was a bold and 
skilful navigator, sailed as fast as a Dutch merchantman 





00 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


of the year 1800, nearly as fast at times as an American 
yacht or clipper of our fathers’ day. Now, we steam 
twelve and fifteen miles an hour with wonderful regular¬ 
ity, whether wind and tide be favorable or not; nor is it 
likely that we shall ever be able to go much faster. But 
the progress in the means of communication is the most 
remarkable of all. In this respect Mr. Pitt was no better 
off than Pericles or Agamemnon. If Ruth had wished 
to write to Naomi, or David to send a word of love to 
Jonathan when he was a hundred miles away, they could 
not possibly have done it under twelve hours. Nor could 
we to our own friends fifty years ago. In 1870 the hum¬ 
blest citizen of Great Britain can send such a message, 
not a hundred miles, but a thousand, in twelve 'minutes. 

Suppose for a moment the advent of another fifty 
years during which the activity of the human mind 
should be directed towards Chemistry as applied to Sur¬ 
gery and Medicine and hygienic influences in general, 
and some of the highest authorities in therapeutics tell 
us that we can scarcely conjecture the results that might 
be achieved ; — sleep at will, with all the uncalculated 
gain of time which that implies ; the conquest of all pain 
not needed as a warning; the prevention of infant and 
gratuitous mortality ; the extinction of epidemic diseases, 
as leprosy and the plague have become extinct in Europe. 

But it will be said, all these are material matters, and 
the vastest advance may be attained in those without any 
consequent approach to your ideal State. Scarcely: ma¬ 
terial victories and achievements make intellectual and 
moral ones attainable. But suppose again, — what no 




REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


Cl 


reader of History will deem a wild supposition, — sup¬ 
pose the advent of a man, filled and fired with “ the 
enthusiasm of Humanity,” and imbued with the true 
conception of progress, — the prophet of a grand yet 
realizable Ideal. Suppose such seed as he could sow 
falling on a prepared and fertile soil, and in a favorable 
season. Sucli prophets have been raised up in the past, 
and such happy conjunctions of suitable conditions have 
occurred. Imagine a Statesman or Leader, of fervid elo¬ 
quence, convincing logic, with sound conceptions both of 
ends and means, preaching to an educated people, at a 
happy epoch, — and why should he not inaugurate a gen¬ 
eration of sustained and rightly guided effort which would 
revolutionize for good, and for all time, our entire social 
and moral surroundings ? Surely Human Nature is not 
so changed or sunk that spiritual forces cannot again work 
greater marvels than mechanical or chemical or economic 
agencies have done. Thought has not yet grown feebler 
than electricity and gases in moulding the destinies of 
man.* 

* The following quotation, in an analogous line of thought, will 
be found suggestive, if not acceptable (“ Spectator,” August 8, 
1868 ) : — 

“ We write and chatter, but none of us know what a community 
in which the majority was sovereign, and each man was as compe¬ 
tent to form an opinion as an average county member now is, would 
be like. That is an advance conceivable without revolution, and no 
change we have yet encountered could so completely transform 
Western society, its conditions, its ways, and it may well be, its ob¬ 
jects. A happy life might become the ideal instead of a progressive 
life, and half the existing social motors cease to act. All the new 



62 


, ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


There are, however, three antagonistic agencies to be 
considered, the tendency of which appears hostile to all 
continuous progress or radical and far-reaching amelio¬ 
ration ; and which, if they be really as persistent and 
incurable as they seem, must be fatal to the realization 
of our dreams of the ultimate happiness of mankind, or 

experiments in living tried in America have had that for ultimate 
end, and have had as chiefs men above the uncultivated class, men 
usually who have just emerged from the uncivilized stage. Society 
as it is, is not the ultimate outcome of human thought, — if it be, 
the best thing men can do is to give up the struggle to improve 
others, and go in for self-cultivation alone, as the highest Americans 
seem disposed to do ; but without dreaming of social revolutions, 
let us think what universal and tolerably equal education really 
implies. Well, this, for one thing, that work shall be paid for in 
proportion to its disagreeableness, — a very prosaic and undeniable 
proposition, which of itself and by itself would grind all existing ar¬ 
rangements into powder. Imagine the man who carts muck better 
paid than the man who sells tapes ! a change actually visible in full 
work in Illinois and Michigan. There is no need to talk, about pos¬ 
sible republics and impossible equalities, about the effect of household 
suffrage or the decay of the feudal idea ; education, if we get it, will 
of itself be a sufficient solvent; and getting it, though improbable, 
is far less impossible than the extinction of feudalism once appeared. 

“ Or suppose a new creed, or new development of the great exist¬ 
ing creed, takes a strong hold of the masses of the West. Observers 
think they see a strong tendency towards secularism, — a creed that, 
if adopted, would pulverize existing society, which, with all its faults, 
is not based on the theory ol securing the greatest comfort in this 
world ; but let us imagine that history is true, that men will not 
live without a religious belief, and that the belief will probably have 
some connection with the root faith of the last few centuries, be, in 
fact, a new form of Christianity. How great —let rectors say — 



REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


03 

must relegate tliat realization to a world of wholly al¬ 
tered conditions. These agencies are,— first, the alleged 
perpetual and inevitable struggle for mere existence ; 
secondly, the multiplication of the race from its least 
eligible specimens, or, as it has been happily termed, the 
non-survival of the fittest; and, thirdly, the increasing 

would be the change produced by a general impression that we 
ought to live as Christ lived, or as He said Ave ought to live, to take 
His teaching as it stands, and not as the learned have for a few cen¬ 
turies declared that He meant it to stand? How would wealth and 
poverty face each other then ? Or suppose the enthusiasm of hu¬ 
manity to get a strong hold upon men. It is odd, but it is true, that 
the only people who seem nowadays willing to be “ faithful unto 
slaying ” — not, be it noticed, merely “ unto being slain ”— are the 
enthusiasts, the John Browns, Garibaldis, and Louis Blancs of all 
sorts upon whom that enthusiasm has descended. How would our 
social arrangements stand that new strain ? Or suppose the change 
mainly one of dogma, — that, for example, Western mankind in 
general got into its head the idea, which many English clergymen 
have got into theirs, that the prize offered by Christianity is eternal 
life, that the phrases eternal life and eternal death are literally true, 
that man either rejoins Christ or dies like a flower, — would not that 
.act as a pretty rapid solvent of institutions ? We think we could 
advance some strong reasons for believing that of all the heresies 
current among us, that is, perhaps, the most enticing and most dan¬ 
gerous ; but it is but one of a hundred, any one of which may for a 
moment prevail, and in prevailing make the next lialf-century 
a period of change before which the last half-century will seem 
stable and uneventful. 

“ That any change of all those that we have indicated will occur is 
perhaps improbable, but not one of them is impossible, and in each 
i i contained the germ of innovations to which those of our period of 
' ( concentrated progress ’ will seem but small and weak.” 





64 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


prevalence of democratic views and institutions,—a prev¬ 
alence which many deem irresistible and fated. The two 
former I shall consider in separate chapters; the last, as 
I propose to deal with it very briefly, I may as well 
speak of here. 

The case is simply this. The ultimate realization of 
our ideal depends upon all the influences which determine 
the condition and improvement of a community — its po¬ 
litical and social action, its legislation and administration, 
the education of the people (using that word in its widest 
sense, to include the education of life as well as of infancy, 
the teaching of the pulpit as well as of the school-room), 
its sanitary laws, its municipal government, its property 
arrangements — being set and continued in a right direc¬ 
tion ; that is, being guided by a sincere purpose towards 
good, and by competent wisdom to determine how that 
good may most surely be attained. Now, as civilized and 
social life grows daily more rapid and more complex, and 
the problems with which it lias to deal therefore at once 
vaster, more difficult, and more urgent, the largest intel¬ 
lects and the widest knowledge are needed to handle them 
and solve them; intellects the least liable to be clouded 
by interest or passion, and the most qualified by training 
and study to foresee the consequences, and detect the cor¬ 
relations and reciprocal operation on different classes, of 
each law or executive proceeding. The science of govern¬ 
ment is the most intricate and perplexing of all, demand¬ 
ing mental and moral qualities of a higher order than any 
other. Self-government, as it is not very correctly termed, 
is assuredly net the simplest form of rule. Yet at the 




REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


65 


very time when the influences which determine the well¬ 
being of the community are growing more numerous and 
involved, and the problems of social life more complicated 
and more vast, the spread of democratic ideas and institu¬ 
tions is throwing the control, the management, the ulti¬ 
mate decision, at least, of all these influences and problems, 
the final guidance of all administrative and legislative ac- 
. tion, in short, into the hands of the numerical majority, 
of those classes, that is, which, however their condition 
as to property and education and morals may be raised, 
must always be the least educated portion of the commu- 
nity, the least endowed with political capacity, the least 
possessed of either the leisure, the characteristics, or the 
knowledge requisite for the functions assigned to them or 
assumed by them. The masses may no longer be very 
poor, or very ignorant, or in any way ill-disposed; but 
under no conditions can they help being more ignorant, 
more engrossed with the struggle for individual well-being, 
more unqualified to foresee or consider remote and collat¬ 
eral consequences, more unable to deal patiently, largely, 
consistently, and profoundly with the questions which 
occupy the statesman and affect the life of nations, than 
those other classes to whom wealth gives leisure to grow 
wise. The few — intellectually at least, and in all those 
moral qualifications which directly or indirectly are con¬ 
nected with intellect — must always, and as it would seem 
unavoidably, be fitter to bear rule, abler to govern right¬ 
eously and sagaciously, than the many. 

Yet, unquestionably, the tendency of events in our days, 
and in all civilized countries, is to take political power 





66 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


from tlie few and confer it on the many; and in the view 
of Tocqueville and his disciples this tendency is absolutely 
irresistible. If so, what must he its operation on those 
who wish to look sanguinely on the prospects of human¬ 
ity ? For the few cannot easily take hack power from the 
many on whom they have conferred it; and history re¬ 
cords no encouraging instances of the mass voluntarily 
surrendering a supremacy they have once enjoyed. Nor 
does our observation of democratic communities, even the 
most favored, do much to alter or impair the conclusions 
at which a priori we have arrived. The United States, 
France, and even Switzerland, at present, are not con¬ 
soling spectacles. 

I have little to urge against the validity of the above 
reasoning, or in mitigation of the depressing conclusions 
to which it logically points. If democratic — or I would 
rather say, ochlocratic — influences and institutions are to 
spread and hear sway permanently, then the day of my 
cherished vision must indeed he distant. But I do not 
believe the tendency to he so irresistible as is fancied. I 
am not sure that it may not contain within it the seeds 
of a counteracting and correcting agency. That the con¬ 
cerns and feelings of the masses are obtaining increased 
and paramount consideration in our days, is a hopeful 
sign of the times at which we must all rejoice. If this 
had been always so, or had been so in time, probably the 
occasion for handing over political power to the masses 
might never have arisen; nor would the phenomenon have 
been so formidable when it did arise. If the interests of 
the lower classes are dealt with, even at this eleventh 





REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


G7 


hour, in a generous, candid, sympathetic spirit, according 
to the dictates of simple justice, and on principles of wise 
policy and sound economy, I am even inclined to believe 
that the potentiality of paramount rule in political matters, 
so rashly conferred upon them, may never be actually re¬ 
alized or exercised. There are two or three very signifi¬ 
cant and reassuring circumstances which it is desirable to 
note. Neither in England, nor in America, nor in France, 
have ochlocratic institutions (those giving political power 
to the mere masses, the numerical majority) been obtained 
by the masses by their own strength or on their own de¬ 
mand. In every instance they have been conceded by the 
folly, the weakness, the short-sightedness, and generally 
by the sinister and clashing interests of those above them. 
In America, universal suffrage, conferring electoral rights 
on Irish and German emigrants before they had acquired 
any one of the qualifications of good citizens, was the 
result of unpatriotic and improvident party conflict, for 
the sake of obtaining a dear-bought victory by the help 
of “ the foreign vote.” Bitterly have the Americans paid 
for their folly, and clearly do they now recognize the 
error. In precisely the same manner, though in a less 
extreme and obvious shape, is the household suffrage we 
have now established here the result of the strife for power 
between Conservative and Liberal Governments, and per¬ 
haps the most pernicious of its consequences. In France, 
as is every-year becoming more recognized by all students 
of her history, the ochlocracy which is now driving her to 
seemingly irretrievable downfall is traceable to the fatal 
weakness of monarch and ministers alike in February, 



68 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


1848, when a Parliamentary demand for a very moderate 
extension of a very restricted franchise was allowed to 
become first a street riot and then a mob revolution, 
though ordinary determination and consistency of pur¬ 
pose among the authorities might have prevented it from 
ever growing' beyond the dimensions of a mere police 
affair, and have crushed it at the outset. 

In England, if the latent electoral power of the masses 
ever becomes noxiously formidable, — which no doubt is 
possible enough, so little wise and patriotic are our gen¬ 
eral class of politicians, — it will be owing to one of two 
things, or to a combination of both ; either to a neglect, or 
supposed hostility, or disheartening want of sympathy, on 
the part of the governing classes to the wants and inter¬ 
ests of those masses ; or, more probably, to the rival fac¬ 
tions in the State seeking to use and organize the votes 
of the working classes on their own behalf respectively, as 
against their antagonists. As long as property is safe and 
its rights respected, the legitimate and inevitable influence 
it must ever wield, directly and through the accessories 
which belong to it (of which wealth and superior knowl¬ 
edge, refinement and intelligence, are the principal), is so 
enormous that w T e cannot doubt its winning an easy vic¬ 
tory in any social struggle, and even warding off the near 
approach of any such struggle, provided only the holders 
of property hang together and recognize in time the. danger 
of division in their ranks; and there is surely sagacity 
and foresight enough to create close union among all pos - 
sessional classes at the first serious menace to the security 
and sacredness of property. This is the first safeguard 



REALIZABLE IDEALS. 


69 


we have to trust to. The second is a pleasanter one to 
think of. It is that the great bulk of the community — 
engrossed more or less in daily labor, interested and occu¬ 
pied mainly in the matters that lie close about them and 
concern them most urgently, caring usually for political 
questions only or chiefly inasmuch as these affect, or are 
supposed to affect, their own condition — will be willing 
enough, partly from indolence and indifference, partly from 
a vague impression that their superiors understand these 
matters, and that they themselves do not, to leave them 
in the hands of the upper classes; provided only these 
classes are wise and just enough to take care that no mani¬ 
fest wrong, no irritating or grinding misery, and no un¬ 
sympathetic or insolent neglect, shall ever rouse the mil¬ 
lions, who would otherwise lie contented and quiescent, 
to seize the reins or to upset the coach. “ Pour le peuple, ce 
n’est jamais par envie d’attaquer qu’il se souleve, mais par 
impatience de souffrir.” We might, perhaps, hope that, 
just in proportion as the working classes are comfortable, 
prosperous, and educated, will they be disinclined to med¬ 
dle in governmental affairs (which are always laborious 
and harassing, and seldom remunerative or satisfactory); 
but this cannot be predicted with any confidence. It is 
rational, however, to anticipate that the better the masses 
are governed, the less anxious they will be to undertake 
the heavy burden and the hard task of governing them¬ 
selves. 















* 





















II. 


MALTHUS NOTWITHSTANDING. 







MALTIIUS NOTWITHSTANDING. 


t 


rT^HE hopes of indefinite progress and attainment 
--L expressed in the opening chapters are by no means 
new. They have reappeared at different epochs. They 
have been cherished by some men in all ages, and by 
whole nations and continents fitfully and during short 
periods. 

Towards the close of the eighteenth century, more 
than two generations since, a sudden glow of this san¬ 
guine faith in man’s future spread over the world. A 
new era seemed to be opening for humanity. Not only 
the unthinking multitudes, but men of large experience 
and devoid neither of great reasoning nor of great ob¬ 
serving powers, — not only the young and ardent, but 
the old and contemplative, — dreamed of perfectibility 
as well as of progress; of an approaching time in which 
both the moral and the physical condition of. our species 
should become thoroughly satisfactory, — subject only to 
the one drawback of mortality, and of mortality reduced 
to its simplest elements, to the mere fact of death in 
the ripeness of age and preparation; of a state of things 
in which every man having enough of the necessaries, 

4 



74 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


comforts, and even luxuries of life should have no 
motive to envy or despoil his neighbor, and in which, 
therefore, all bad passions would die out from mere 
lack of nourishment. In a word, “ our young men saw 
visions and our old men dreamed dreams,” and they 
not only cherished but actually believed in their visions 
and their dreams. Men like Southey and Coleridge and 
Eobert Owen, as in later times and in another country 
men like Fourier and St. Simon, had their pictures and 
their programmes and their panaceas, — and not only 
men of that stamp, but far soberer and acuter minds. 
Those who wish to realize to themselves the sort of 
enthusiasm which anticipation of a state of diffused 
comfort and universal plenty and well-being excited in 
the general imagination, and of the boundless delight 
and sweeping confidence with which it was received, and 
who have not patience to master the whole social and 
literary history of Europe from 1783 to 1793, should 
read Godwin’s “ Political Justice,” and ask their grandfa¬ 
thers to describe the glow of generous emotion with which 
they followed the speculations of that singular book. 

An answer, however, shortly appeared to Air. Godwin 
which shattered all his brilliant pictures of an earthly 
paradise, and overwhelmed all such philanthropic dream¬ 
ers with despondency and gloom, — and this cruel shock 
was administered by a man of singular benevolence and 
piety, a clergyman of the Church of England. Malthus 
demonstrated* or was held to demonstrate, that such a 

* The first edition of the Essay on the “ Principle of Popula¬ 
tion ” was published in 1798. 



MALTHUS NOTWITHSTANDING. 


»-T ^ 

7o 


condition of universal comfort and plenty as was shad¬ 
owed forth could never be reached on earth, — inasmuch 
as there was a constant and irremediable pressure of 
population on the means of subsistence ; that it was in 
the nature, in the essence, of human beings to increase 
in a more rapid ratio than food; that as long as and 
whenever population did increase faster than its suste¬ 
nance, the great mass of mankind must be in a state 
of wretchedness; and that this incurable tendency could 
only be counteracted by—what were merely other forms 
of wretchedness — viz., profligacy, excessive and prema¬ 
ture mortality, or abstinence from marriage, — or, as he 
phrased it, by vice, misery, or moral restraint. In other 
words, he maintained, and seemed to have proved, that 
mankind could only secure that sufficiency of food for 
all, which is the indispensable and main condition of 
virtue and comfort, on terms which must be held to 
preclude comfort and imperil virtue, — with the majority, 
with all ordinary men, in fact, to be fatal to both; 
that is, by seeing most of their children die almost as 
soon as they came into the world, or by themselves and 
their fellows dying rapidly and prematurely from defect 
of nutriment; or by wilfully preventing children coming 
into the world at all; or by resisting and foregoing, habit¬ 
ually and generally, sometimes altogether, always during 
the most craving period of life, those imperious longings 
of the senses, and that equally imperious “ hunger of the 
heart,” which, combined, constitute the most urgent 
necessity of our nature, and which the Creator must 
have made thus urgent for wise and righteous purposes. 






76 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


It is obvious on a moment’s consideration that the 
two former of the above three named terms on which 
alone, according to the Malthusian theory, plenty can 
be secured for all, may be left out of consideration, and 
that practically, the sole condition is the last, — namely, 
the postponement of marriage as a rule during the years 
wdien it is usually most desired, and the abstinence 
from it in many cases altogether; in a word, resolute, 
self-enforced, and prolonged celibacy, precisely at that 
epoch of life, under those circumstances, and among 
those classes, in which celibacy is most difficult; that 
is (as the rough common feelings of mankind at large 
would put it), that life in plenty and comfort can only 
be obtained by the sacrifice of the chief comfort in life, 
and of those joys without which even a life of material 
plenty is a very poor and questionable boon. And, be 
it observed, this is the form the proposition must inev¬ 
itably assume in the minds, not of the vicious, the sen¬ 
sual, the weak, or the self-indulgent portion of mankind, 
but of the natural , unsophisticated, right-feeling, sensi¬ 
ble — though, if you will, unregenerate and unsanctified 
— mass of mankind. 

No wonder that a proposition, which seemed to con¬ 
demn the human species to such hopeless, universal, 
eternal, nay, ever-increasing pressure and privation, 
or to proffer an escape from that lot at a price which 
few could pay, and few would think worth paying, 
should have staggered and shocked those to whom it 
was first propounded. It sounded like the sentence to 
a doom of utter darkness and despair. It seemed to 



MALTHUS NOTWITHSTANDING. 


77 


untrained minds utterly irreconcilable with any intelli¬ 
gent view of the Divine beneficence and wisdom. Yet 
its author appeared to have framed his conclusion with 
such caution, and to have clinched it, so to speak, with such 
close bands of logic and with such a large and indispu¬ 
table induction of facts, that recalcitration against it was 
idle, and refutation of it impossible. He maintained 
it after full discussion, and, with some modifications, 
to the end of his career; and nearly all political econo¬ 
mists of position and repute have accepted his doctrine 
as a fundamental and established axiom of the science. 

Malthus never endeavored to blink the full scope and 
severity of his proposition. In an article on Population, 
which he contributed to the eighth edition of the “ Ency¬ 
clopaedia Britannica,” and which I believe was the latest 
of his writings on that subject, he reproduces it in the 
most uncompromising terms. He lays it down as indis¬ 
putable and obvious, that population, if unchecked, neces¬ 
sarily increases in a geometrical ratio, and that food, the 
produce of the soil, can only at the outside and under the 
most favorable circumstances increase in an arithmetical 
ratio. That the inhabitants of a given country or area 
will, as is seen, actually double their numbers in twenty- 
five years, and might easily double their numbers in a 
much shorter time; whereas, even if we concede that in 
the same twenty-five years the produce of the soil in the 
same given country or area may be doubled likewise, it is 
certain that in the next twenty-five years, while the popu¬ 
lation would again double itself or quadruple its original 
numbers, the soil could at the very utmost only again add 




78 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


an equal increment to that of the preceding period, or treble 
its original yield. What is true of a given country, farm, 
or district, he proceeds to say, must necessarily be true of 
the whole earth ; and neither emigration, free-trade, nor 
equal distribution of the land can affect the ultimate re¬ 
sult. All that these could effect would be a temporary 
alleviation of the pressure of population and subsistence, 
and a certain calculable postponement of the day when 
the ultimate limit of possible numbers and the extreme 
point of pressure would be reached. “ Taking a single 
farm only into consideration, no man would have the har¬ 
dihood to assert that its produce could be made perma¬ 
nently to keep pace with a population increasing at such 
a rate, as it is observed to do, for twenty or thirty years 
together, at particular times and in particular countries.” 
This is obvious and undeniable, and may be conceded at 
once. But, he goes on to say, “ nothing but the confusion 
and indistinctness arising from the largeness of the sub¬ 
ject, and the vague and false notions which prevail re¬ 
specting the efficacy of emigration, could make persons 
deny in the case of an extensive territory, or of the vihole 
earth, what they could not fail to acknowledge in the case 
of a single farm, which may be said fairly to represent it.” 
There must always, everywhere, and to the end of time, 
he maintains, except in the rarest cases and for the brief¬ 
est periods, be pressure of population on the means of 
subsistence. “ It is to the laws of nature, therefore, and 
not to the conduct or institutions of man, that we are to 
attribute the necessity of a strong and ceaseless check on 
the natural increase of population.” 




MALTHUS NOTWITHSTANDING. 


79 


Malthus’s doctrine lias been accepted as undeniable by 
nearly every writer of repute on economical subjects, and 
by none more unreservedly than by the latest, and in some 
respects the greatest of them all, J. S. Mill. None of the 
many authors who have questioned or assailed it, such as 
Ingram, Alison, Sadler, Doubleday, or Quetelet, have been 
able to shake in any material degree its hold upon the 
public mind. Various theories have been put forward in 
competition, but none has obtained any currency, or per¬ 
haps deserved any. It has remained the fixed, axiomatic 
belief of the educated world, that pressure of numbers on 
the means of subsistence is and must remain the normal 
condition of humanity; that, in consequence, distress or 
privation, in one shape or another, must be the habitual 
lot of the great majority of our species, since they can 
only escape the distress and privation arising from insuf¬ 
ficient food by voluntarily embracing the distress and pri¬ 
vation involved in long-continued and perhaps perpetual 
celibacy. Reasoning the most careful and cogent seemed 
to have made this clear, and the observation and experi¬ 
ence of every day and every land seemed to illustrate and 
confirm it. 

Some years ago I hoped to be able to show, in opposition 
to this received doctrine, that, however irrefutable was Mal¬ 
thus’s logic,his premises were imperfect, and his conclusions 
in consequence unsound. It is with some sadness I am now 
compelled to admit that further investigation and deeper 
thought have shaken this confidence. I now only venture 
to suggest as eminently probable what I once fancied I 
could demonstrate to be certain. I still, however, entertain 





SO 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


little doubt of the future discovery and establishment of 
physiological influences or laws, of which Malthus was 
not cognizant, and the tendency of which is to counteract 
and control those which he perceived so clearly; but I 
recognize that at present these are not ascertained; and 
I must therefore confine myself to the task of pointing 
out a few persuasive indications of the existence of these 
undiscovered laws, the direction in which they may be 
looked for, and the vast expanse both of space and time left 
open wherein they may operate and have their perfect work. 

1. Some preliminary misgiving, in the first place, must 
be aroused by noting that the actual fecundity of the hu¬ 
man race has never equalled, and scarcely ever even dis¬ 
tantly approached, its possible fecundity; and that this 
difference is observable when there is neither vice, misery, 
nor moral restraint to account for it; that in the midst 
of the most ample supply of food, where there need and 
can be no anxiety as to the future, where parents are 
healthy, where the climate is good, — where, in a word, 
every circumstance is as favorable as possible to the un¬ 
checked multiplication of the species, where everybody 
marries, and where marriages are as early as is compatible 
with vigor, — the population does not increase nearly as 
fast as theoretically it might do. The most rapid known 
rate of augmentation appears to be that mentioned by 
Humboldt, in some parts of Mexico, where, judging from 
the proportion of births and deaths, he calculated that, if 
there were no interfering circumstances, the population 
would double itself in nineteen years. This was in a 
tropical climate, where the marriages were unusually 



MALTHUS NOTWITHSTANDING. 


81 


early, and the births as numerous as one in seventeen, or 
occasionally one in fifteen. In the United States and 
Lower Canada, which come next, it is calculated that 
when the large immigration is subtracted, the period of 
doubling by natural increase' is twenty-five years. But 
both these fall far short of the possible rate of theoretical 
increase ; since, adopting data which are actually reached 
and, indeed, exceeded in some instances, the population 
of a country can double itself in less than ten years. 

Again, the ordinary size of families in England and 
Wales, judging by a comparison of the yearly marriages 
with the yearly births, is now about 4.15 children, and we 
may fairly assume that with us no artificial means, of ab¬ 
stinence or otherwise, are employed to prevent each mar¬ 
riage yielding its natural number of offspring. But as 
this mode of ascertaining the number of children to a 
marriage is only strictly correct when applied to a sta¬ 
tionary population, we must add something to the above 

figures; and there is, I believe, no reason why we may 

% 

not take Mr. Maltlms’s calculation, and call the number 
4.5. We cannot with any accuracy ascertain the number 
of children born to a marriage in America, as statistics 
there are so complicated by immigration, migration, exten¬ 
sion, and other causes, but I believe no one would place 
the average higher than six. There is, therefore, no rea¬ 
son for believing that the average in the most favorable 
circumstances exceeds this. But the possible number of 
children to a marriage—the natural, unchecked number 
under the best conditions is far beyond this — certainly 
fourfold. The child-bearing ages of women extend over 




ENIGMAS- OF LIFE. 


nearly thirty years, — certainly over twenty-five, or from 
sixteen to forty, inclusive, on a moderate estimate. Twen¬ 
ty-five children to each marriage is therefore no impossi¬ 
bility ; in favorable conditions we should say no unlikely 
occurrence. We all of us know individual cases in which 
it has been realized. In Italy such instances are not very 
unfrequent, — even in England they are not unexampled. 
In Lower Canada we find they are by no means uncommon,* 
— from fourteen to sixteen is a usual number. A recent- 
traveller there assured us he had met with one woman 
who had borne thirty-two children. 

Yet how rarely — even when food is abundant, health 
unquestionable, habits good, an entire absence, that is, 
both of the preventive and the positive check—do we 
see this potential fecundity even approached ! Does not 
the contrast point to some other, as yet occult, influence, 
wholly apart from any of those enumerated by Mr. Mal- 
thus, which operates as a natural and unconscious limi¬ 
tation on human reproduction ? 

2. Some doubt as to the completeness of Maltlms’s 
premises, and the consequent correctness of his conclu¬ 
sions, appears to be suggested by the fact that every man 
is able by his own labor to produce food f enough, not only 

* “Social Science Transactions,” 1862, p. 894, Mr. Hurlbert’s 
Paper on Canada. In Belgium, perhaps the most fecund as well as 
the most densely peopled of old civilized states, the average children 
to a marriage (according to Quetelet) is 4.75 in the least prolific, and 
5.21 in the most prolific provinces. 

t In fact the natural rate of increase of man’s food is out of all 
proportion greater than man’s own rate of increase. A couple of 




MALTHUS NOTWITHSTANDING. 


83 


to sustain himself and those naturally helpless and de¬ 
pendent upon him, hut enough also to exchange for the 
shelter and clothing which are as necessary as food to 
the human animal; and he can do all this and yet leave 
himself ample leisure for other occupations or amuse¬ 
ments. Without indorsing Mr. Godwin’s extravagant 
calculation that half an hour a day devoted by every in¬ 
dividual in a community to agricultural labor would suf¬ 
fice to raise an adequate amount of nutriment, there can 
be no question that a very moderate amount of regular 
industry, whether applied to the production of one article 
or of many, would secure to man an abundant supply of 
all the necessaries, and most of the comforts, of life, — at 
least in all temperate or tropical climates. In the article 
in the Encyclopaedia already quoted, Malthus declares that 
as long as good land was attainable, “ the rate at which 
food could be made to increase would far exceed what was 
necessary to keep pace with the most rapid increase of 
population which the laws of nature in relation to human 

kind permit.” It was obvious, therefore, since every man 

* 

can produce much more than he needs, and since, given 
the land and the labor, food can be made to increase in¬ 
comparably faster than population, and would naturally 
do so, all that is wanted to put man at his ease is a field 
whereon to bestow his industry. It is not that popula¬ 
tion has a natural tendency to increase faster than food, 
or as fast, but simply that the surface of the earth is 

human beings multiply three or four fold in the course of thirty 
years. One potato sprout multiplies twenty-fold in a single year ; 
one crrain of wheat even two hundred-fold in favoring circumstances. 





84 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


limited, and portions of that surface not always nor easily 
accessible. 

3. It was pointed out by the late Mr. Senior, as another 
very suggestive fact, that, taking the world as a whole, and 
history so far as we are acquainted with it, food always 
has increased faster than population, in spite of the alleged 
tendency of population to increase faster than food. Fam¬ 
ines, which used to be so frequent in earlier ages and in 
thickly peopled countries, are now scarcely ever heard of, 
while, at the same time, the average condition of the mass 
of the people has on the whole improved, that is, that 
they have more of the necessaries of life than formerly. 
Probably the only cases in our days of scarcity of food 
amounting to actual famine are to be found where the 
staple crop of a whole country has been destroyed by 
locusts, as sometimes in Asia; or by drought, as occasion¬ 
ally in Hindostan; or by vegetable disease, as in the potato 
rot of Ireland. In sparsely peopled Australia, famine has 
often supervened ; in densely peopled Belgium, never. “ I 
admit (says Mr. Senior) the abstract power of population 
to increase so as to press upon the means of subsistence. 

I deny the habitual tendency. I believe the tendency to 
be just the reverse. What is the picture presented by the 
earliest records of those nations which are now civilized ? 
or, which is the same, what is now the state of savage 
nations ? A state of habitual poverty and occasional 

famine.If a single country can be found in which 

there is now less poverty than is universal in a savage 
state, it must be true that under the circumstances in 
which that country has been placed, the means of subsist- 





MALT HUS NOTWITHSTANDING. 


85 


ence have a tendency to increase faster than the popula¬ 
tion. Now, this is the case in every civilized country. 
Even Ireland, the country most likely to afford an instance 
of what Mr. Mill supposes to he the natural course of 
things, poor and populous as she is, suffers less from want, 
with her eight millions of people,* than when her only 
inhabitants were a few septs of hunters and fishers. In 
our early history, famines and pestilences, the consequence 
of famine, constantly recur. At present, though our 
numbers are trebled or quadrupled, they are unheard of. 
Whole colonies of the first settlers in America perished 
from absolute want. Their successors struggled long 
against hardship and privation, but every increase of 
their numbers seems to have been accompanied or pre¬ 
ceded by increased means of support. 

“ If it be conceded that there exists in the human race 
a tendency to rise from barbarism to civilization, and that 
the means of subsistence are proportionally more abundant 
in a civilized than in a savage state,— and neither of 
these propositions can be denied, — then it must follow 
that there is a natural tendency in subsistence to increase 
in a greater ratio than population.” (Two Lectures deliv¬ 
ered at Oxford by N. IV. Senior. Lect. II.) 

An interesting correspondence between Mr. Senior and 
Mr. Malthus followed the publication of these lectures, 
and was appended to them, leaving the point of the con¬ 
troversy pretty much where it originally stood, viz., that 
while the theoretic power of population to increase faster 
than food was undoubted, the practical fact was that this 


* This was written in 1829. 



8 6 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


power was scarcely ever exercised; Mr. Mai thus, however, 
holding to his former doctrine that the reasons of its non- 
exercise were to be found solely in the severe and general 

to 

operation of the preventive check. 

4. Another class of facts which I shall do no more than 
allude to, because, though often examined casually, they 
have, as far as I know, never been thoroughly sifted or 
brought into a focus, points even more distinctly to the 
existence of some cause operating, under certain circum¬ 
stances, to limit human fertility even beyond what is 
consistent with the multiplication or preservation of the 
race, or class, or type. I refer to cases in which a family, 
or set of families, or a whole variety, dies out where no 
deficiency or difficulty of subsistence can be alleged as 
the explanation, and where, therefore, some other cause, 
almost certainly physiological, must be presupposed. 
Such is the case of baronets, wdiose titles are perpetually 
lapsing from the failure of male heirs, — assuredly not 
from abstinence from marriage, nor from lack of food. 
Such, again, is the frequent extinction of peerage families, 
of whom plentiful sustenance may at least be predicated.* 
I am aware of Mr. Galton’s ingenious explanation, based 
upon the fact of peers so often marrying heiresses, who of 
course ex vi termini come from comparatively unfertile 

* A similar, but still more decided, process of gradual extinction 
of rich and privileged families appears to have been one of the most 
constant phenomena in the civilized states of the Ancient World, — 
in Italy and Greece at least. For remarkable examples and ample 
proof, see Dureau de la Malle, Economie 'politique des Romains, I. p. 
417 et seq. 



MALTHUS NOTWITHSTANDING. 


87 


families; but the explanation itself is a collateral con¬ 
firmation of the fact I am pointing out, — for whence 
arise these many unfertile but rich families ? If the 
^ a\ e every facility for prolonging life, and 

no motive to abstain from marriage, are so often barren 
and liable to see their families die out or dwindle down 
to one heiress, does not the circumstance point to the 
operation of some influence other than Malthus’s “ pres¬ 
sure on subsistence,” almost antagonistic to it, and espe¬ 
cially potent in the most civilized and comfortable forms of 
life ? I know that other less occult causes of the phenom¬ 
ena in question have been suggested; but they are not 
such as can be discussed here, nor I believe could they do 
anything beyond slightly mitigating the force of my con¬ 
clusion. If from classes we turn to races and nations, his¬ 
tory affords examples enough of once populous countries 
now inhabited by comparatively scanty numbers where 
unwholesomeness and lack of food (or food-producing soil) 
will do little to account for the decline.* And if, instead 

* See Dureau de la Malle, liv. ii. ch. 13. Also Gibbon, I. ch. 2. 
Merivale’s “ Roman Empire,” IV. 433, VII. 602, 604, 608. The pro¬ 
cess of depopulation in many provinces of the Roman dominions, since 
the time of the Antonines, has been excessive, and unaccountable on 
any of Malthus’s hypotheses. We may instance especially the north 
coast of Africa, so populous in the palmy days of Rome, and Asia 
Minor and Syria, — to say nothing of Turkish countries farther east 
still. According to Merivale, Asia Minor and Syria once supported 
27,000,000 of people. According to M’Culloch they do not now con¬ 
tain more than one fourth of those numbers. Yet we do not find that 
they have become either unhealthy or unfertile. Several analogous 
indications scattered through history point to the depression of spirits 





88 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


of the annals of the past, we read the living history that 
is before our eyes, we find everywhere savage races dying 
out with the greatest rapidity,—and dying out as much 
from paucity of births (diminished fecundity, that is) as 
from increase of deaths, — even where lack of food, or 
means of procuring it, can scarcely be put forward as the 
reason or an adequate one (as in the instance of the Maories 
and the Polynesians); and where, after full allowance has 
been made for wars, diseases, and vices, some unexplained 
residuum is left, which points to a hidden influence, phys¬ 
iological no doubt, but belonging to the nervous and not 
to the nutritive system. Again, nowhere in the United 
States, one would suppose, can pressure of population on 
means of subsistence be alleged as the true acting cause 
of non-increase of numbers or failing fecundity; yet it is 
asserted confidently (and there seems every reason to be¬ 
lieve with accuracy) that the native-born citizens of some 
of the New England States cannot — at all events do not 
— keep up their numbers.* 

When astronomers found the calculable influence of 

or of nervous energy, which seems to accompany the decline of 
Nations and the decay of Races, as exercising a singularly sterilizing 
influence on mankind. 

The same wholesale dying out of old families is observable, I 
believe, in other countries at the present time. M. de Tocqueville 
told me of one district in France where two hundred families had 
become extinct, as far as the direct line was concerned, in about a 
century, from a variety of causes. 

* See especially different monographs by Dr. Storer, addressed, in 
the first instance, to members of his own profession, and, I believe, 
confirmed by several of them. 



MALTIIUS NOTWITHSTANDING. 


89 


the law of gravitation on the motions of the planets 
disturbed and qwo tanto counteracted by some unex¬ 
plained or undiscovered agency, they at once confidently 
inferred the existence of an unknown body at an un¬ 
guessed distance but in a specified direction. They 
believed in Neptune long before they found him. Why 
should not we do in physiology what they did in 
physics ? * 

5. Lastly. The repellent character of Malthus’s con¬ 
clusion has been usually regarded as in itself a ground 
for suspecting its truth. Nor do I think this ground, 
though confessedly open to question, is peremptorily to 
be put aside as unphilosophical. It is unpliilosophical 
to reject indisputable and proved conclusions because 
we do not like them, because they disturb our serenity, 
shatter our hopes, or run counter to our prejudices. It 
is not unphilosophical to doubt the accuracy or com¬ 
pleteness of any course of reasoning which has brought 
us to results at variance with other results which appear 
at least equally certain, and which have been reached by 
similar processes of thought. Nay, more, it would be 
unwise not to doubt in such cases, not to suspend our 
judgment, not to reconsider our inferences and our data. 
There are certain truths which the general sense of man¬ 
kind has adopted and clings to as undeniable, partly 
from instinctive conviction, partly from overpowering 
proof, partly from religious teaching, — such as the wis- 

* Consult Doubleday’s “ True Law of Population,” pp. 36, et 
seq., also ch. x., xi. And more especially Darwin’s “ Animals and 
Plants under Domestication,” II. 148- 171. 




90 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


dom, power, and ultimate, essential, universal goodness 
of God. It is right and wise to doubt provisionally — 
not of course to deny — any doctrine which contradicts 
or seems to contradict these truths, and which has been 
arrived at by steps of logic. And it is so for this simple 
reason, — that, though w r e may feel confident of the just¬ 
ness of our inferences, if scientifically drawn by cautious 
and well-trained intellects, and sanctioned after due ex¬ 
amination by other qualified minds, yet we can scarcely 
ever feel similar confidence as to the perfect accuracy 
and completeness of owe premises. Unless we can be cer¬ 
tain that we know everything bearing upon the subject, 
that we are in possession of every datum necessary for 
framing our conclusions, — a certainty which is very 
seldom attainable, — it may well be that there is some¬ 
thing we do nob know, some facts which have escaped 
our observation or research, which, if taken into account, 
would have materially modified or altogether overthrown 
our conclusions. Logic fails far oftener from defective 
data than from careless processes. Not only therefore is 
doubt justified by* sound philosophy, where improbable 
doctrines are sought to be thrust upon us by even the 
most close and cogent steps of ratiocination, but the doc¬ 
trines may be of such a character, may be so irreconcil¬ 
able with beliefs that have become axiomatic, may so 
revolt our most carefully wrought-out convictions, that 
we should be warranted — not indeed in rejecting them 
if positively proved, but — in declaring that there must 
be some deficiency in the premises, some omitted or un¬ 
discovered data, which the future progress of knowledge 




MALTHUS NOTWITHSTANDING. 91 

would bring to light, and which, when introduced into 
the question, would wholly change its present aspect. 
Now Malthus’s theory of population was precisely one 
of those doctrines, and therefore justly led numbers who 
could find no flaw in his reasoning, to feel satisfied that 
there must be some error or hiatus in the bases on which 
it was grounded; and who, in consequence, while unable 
to refute his conclusions, were equally unable to adopt 
them. 

Malthus himself felt this so strongly, that he took 
much pains to argue that his theory was in no way 
irreconcilable with the goodness of God, but on the 
contrary harmonized with what we know of His general 
dealings with mankind. While admitting that it was 
incompatible with the happiness, if not the virtue, of 
the great mass of mankind, that it called upon them to 
do violence to their strongest instincts and to some of 
their best and most natural sentiments, and opened a 
terrible vista of probable wretchedness for the future of 
the race, he argued that this world was designed to be a 
state of probation, not of enjoyment, — that man was 
called upon to keep all his appetites in check, and was 
warned and punished by the laws of nature if he did 
not, — and that only by the exercise of such check could 
he ever advance in civilization or in moral dignity. 
The allegations may be quite irrefragable, the plea has no 
doubt a certain force, but it is impossible not to see and 
feel that it does not really meet the objection it was 
intended to neutralize. For, in the first place, though 
Providence may have designed this world to be a state of 







92 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


probation, lie assuredly did not design it to be a state of 
misery; and. a state of misery, or at least of distress, to 
the majority it must be, as Malthus repeatedly concedes, 
if liis view of the laws of nature be correct and com¬ 
plete. In the next place, though man is bound, both 
as a condition of progress and under pain of suffering, 
to control his propensities and to moderate his appetites 
and desires, he is not bound to deny them. If he is idle 
and prefers inordinate rest to reasonable work, nature 
says that he shall starve or live miserably; but nature 
never says that he shall not sleep or rest at all, or not 
during the best years of his life, or the dark hours of 
night. If he eats or drinks immoderately, nature pun¬ 
ishes him with dyspepsia and disease; but nature never 
forbids him to eat when he is hungry, and to drink when 
he is thirsty, provided he does both with discretion. 
Indeed she punishes him equally if he abstains as if he 
exceeds, if he eats too little, or not at all, as if he eats 
too much. In the same way, if he indulges to excess 
in the pleasures connected with reproduction, nature pun¬ 
ishes him with premature exhaustion, with appropriate 
maladies, with moral enervation and corruption ; but she 
does not punish the rational and legitimate enjoyments 
of love. On the contrary, she does punish enforced and 
total abstinence, occasionally in the one sex, often, if not 
habitually, in the other, by nervous disturbance and suf¬ 
fering, and by functional disorder. 

Now, if Maltlms’s doctrine be correct, the great major¬ 
ity of men and women, if they are to escape a condition 
of perpetual misery and want, must not only keep within 



MALTHtTS NOTWITHSTANDING. 93 

moderate bounds the strongest propensity of their nature, 
but must suppress and deny it altogether, — always for 
long and craving years, often, and in the case of numbers, 
for the whole of life. Observe, too, that the desire in 
question is the especial one of all our animal wants 
which is redeemed from animalism by being blended 
with our strongest and least selfish affections, which is 
ennobled by its associations in a way in which the appe¬ 
tites of eating and drinking and sleeping can never be 
ennobled, — in a degree to which the pleasures of the 
eye and ear can be ennobled only by assiduous and lofty 
culture. Yet this longing — which lies at the root of 
life, which enters largely into the elements of chivalry, 
which nature has inextricably intertwisted with the holy 
joys of maternity—is singled out as the one, and the 
only one, which must be smothered, if we would live in 
plenty or in peace. Do the laws of nature say this ? If 
so, they speak in a language which is wholly exceptional, 
and which here, and here only, has to be interpreted in a 
“ non-natural ” sense. Is there any other instance in 
which Nature says in the most distinct and imperious 
language, “ Thou shalt do this ” ? — and also in language 
equally imperious, if not equally distinct, “If thou dost, 
thou shalt be punished as in other cases those only are 
punished who transgress my laws ” ? I know of no anal¬ 
ogous instance.* 

* Two antagonistic considerations should be noticed here. It has 
been suggested that the paramount and despotic strength which the 
instinct in question has now assumed is not natural , but excessive ; 
the excess being due to ages of unrestrained indulgence added to 



94 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


The various considerations suggested above appear to 
point irresistibly to the conclusion — though to justify it, 
or even fully to develop it, would require a separate trea¬ 
tise, and not a mere incidental chapter like' the present 
— that Malthus’s logic, though so keen and cogent, was 
at fault, because based on imperfect and insufficient 
premises; that in addition to the positive and pre¬ 
ventive checks to over-population notified by him, there 
exist physiological checks which escaped his search , and 
which will prove adequate for the work they have to do ; 
that if we were wise and virtuous, the positive check 
would entirely disappear (with the exception of death, in 
the fulness of time), and the prudential check be only 
called upon to operate to that degree which is needed to 
elevate and purify and regulate the animal instinct, and 
which is quite reconcilable with and conducive to vir- 

other bad influences in the present. Probably this is so ; to a large 
extent I have no doubt it is, and this is one reason why I venture 
to entertain better hopes for the future. But it must be admitted 
without doubt, I fancy, that at all events the instinct in man is 
perennial, not periodic ; and that on Malthus’s theory the utmost 
anticipatable moderation in its exercise would virtually be just as 
certain to result in over-population and discomforting pressure on 
subsistence, as its present pampered and abnormal development. 

Mr. Darwin’s views and researches, again, remind us that the 
universal law of all vegetable and animal life is the struggle for 
subsistence, and that the conclusion we deprecate and deem im¬ 
probable is merely the natural inference that man is no exception 
to the permanent and general rule. Certainly this is undeniable ; 
but surely the marvellous 'primacy of man, cerebrally, and therefore 
mentally, renders it at least reasonable to seek to vindicate for him 
an exceptional destiny, notwithstanding a common oik in. 



MALTHUS NOTWITHSTANDING. 


95 


tue, happiness, and health; — in fine, that Providence 
will he vindicated from our premature misgivings when 
we discover that there exist natural laws, whose operation 
is to modify and diminish human fecundity in proportion 
as mankind advances in real civilization, in moral and 
intellectual development; and that these laws will (un¬ 
less we thwart them) have ample time and space wherein 
to produce their effect, long before that ultimate crisis 
shall arrive which the Malthusian theory taught us so to 
dread. I briefly touch upon this point first. 

If any one island of limited extent and already mod¬ 
erately peopled, Great Britain, for example, were to be 
effectually isolated from the rest of the world, either by 
natural causes or by human laws, it is obvious that, in 
a comparatively short time — the reproductive faculty 
remaining “ excessive,” as it is now, and as it probably 
would continue to be — population would press upon the 
means of subsistence, and either increased mortality, or 
increased privation and distress from the necessity of an 
augmented severity in the preventive check, must be the 
result. But no country is thus completely isolated, and 
no near approach to such isolation can arise, except from 
human folly, indolence, or ignorance. Such isolation and 
absolute impossibility of expansion as would render the 
Malthusian theory self-evident and indisputably true, 
would be traceable, not, as he alleges, to the laws of 
nature, but to man’s interference with those laws. 

Again, since a man can produce from the soil a great 
deal more than is needed for his own subsistence, and 
since, in consequence, food will and may increase faster 




96 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 

than population, — granted only an unlimited supply of 
available land, — it is obvious that there can be no 
necessary pressure on the means of subsistence, until all 
the available surface of the globe is taken up and fully 
cultivated. Any pressure that occurs before that extreme 
point is reached, it is clear, can only be caused by imped¬ 
iments to expansion ; and all these impediments are to 
civilized man artificial, not natural, — of human, not of 
Providential origin. It is obvious that a single family 
or a single tribe, surrounded by an unlimited territory of 
uninhabited and productive soil, might go on multiplying 
indefinitely and without restraint, on the sole condition 
of spreading as they multiplied ; and that, so long as they 
fulfilled this condition, they would never have an idea 
of what pressure of population on subsistence meant, 
till they had reached the bounds and exhausted the 
resources of the habitable earth. 

Now what are the practicable impediments to this grad¬ 
ual extension of man over the earth, analyzed and traced 
back to their source ? Why do men not thus spread as 
they multiply ? Why have they not always done so ? 
That they have a natural tendency to do so we know. 
It is the dictate of nature and of common-sense to take 
in a fresh field from the outlying waste, or to extend 
their forays over a larger hunting-ground, as children 
grow up and marry, and as more mouths have to be fed. 
It has been the practice of mankind to act thus in all 
times and in some form, so far as history can reach back. 
There are two ways in which men may spread : they may 
either actually disperse and settle on other lands, or they 




MALTHUS NOTWITHSTANDING. 97 

may remain at home and exchange the products of their 
industry for the products of those other lands. The one 
is emigration, the other is manufacture and commerce. 
The process by which the earth has been peopled has 
been usually a mixture of the two, and for the purpose 
of our argument it is immaterial which is followed, or in 
what manner the two are blended. People who multiply 
and live in plenty bring new land into cultivation, and 
virtually spread themselves, whether they cultivate that 
new land with their own hands, or through the instru¬ 
mentality of others whom they employ and pay. 

The impediments to the spread of man over the globe 
are either natural or artificial, physical or moral. The 
physical ones, properly regarded, will be seen to be, and 
to have usually been, nearly inoperative. They are cli¬ 
mate, sea, and distance. As far as distance is concerned, 
this is practically an impediment chiefly in the case of 
too dense populations situated in the interior of Conti¬ 
nents and Countries, and hemmed in and kept at a dis¬ 
tance from available spare land by surrounding numbers. 
Locomotion, no doubt, is difficult and costly to the poor; 
but in civilized states neither the difficulty nor the cost 
are insuperable. In the beginning; of course, a commu¬ 
nity spreads from the outside and gradually, and as it 
spreads, and as civilization increases with numbers and 
dispersion, roads are made, and means of communication 
are opened up in all directions. Even mountains and 
rivers are mere difficulties to be overcome, not obstacles 
to prevent. Sea, as we know, operated to check expan¬ 
sion only in the earliest times, in a very slight degree, 

5 


G 





93 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


and in rare and isolated spots, such as some of the re¬ 
moter Polynesian islands. To civilized man it is a pre¬ 
pared highway, a channel of communication, not a barrier 
to migration. Climate, where, as in all natural cases, the 
expansion of the community is gradual, merely directs 
the course of population, and does not check it. Man 
accommodates himself to climate and provides against its 
rigors as long as it yields him a fair recompense for his 
labor. When it ceases to do this, if he lives according 
to nature, he turns elsewhere, and virtually the limits of 
the habitable world, or at least of available land, have 
been reached in that direction. 

The real impediments to expansion — the reasons why 
man has not spread freely as he multiplied — have all 
been of a different order, and have proceeded from him¬ 
self alone. The first has been his indolence. He was too 
lazy or unenterprising to go far afield for his food; he 
preferred to remain on the land where he was born ; he 
chose to be satisfied with scanty food at home rather than* 
seek plenty a few miles away; he was willing even in 
barbarous times to fight with his brethren for subsistence, 
or to abstain from marriage, or to let his children die 
from insufficient nutriment, often indeed to kill them, 
rather than rouse himself to the exertion of seeking 
abundance in a new home. This indisposition to spread 
operates everywhere and always in some measure and 
in some form. With some it is ignorance of what new 
fields offer them, and how easily they can be reached,—- 
as with the Dorsetshire peasants. With others it is mere 
“ concentrativeness,” — a tendency to the maladie du 



MALTHUS NOTWITHSTANDING. 


99 


'pays, — as with the French and some Celtic nations. 
But in all cases, so long as the land is there, and the 
means of reaching it exists, the impediment is human; 
and man has no right to speak of “ pressure of popula¬ 
tion on subsistence,” and to reproach Providence in his 
heart. 

The second impediment is meeting with hostile nations 
who compress each other and forbid mutual expansion. 
They may not be to blame ; for as long as boundless, 
unoccupied lands exist, each tribe may be entitled to say 
to every other, “ Go and expand elsewhere, and leave us 
alone.” But this impediment, like the other, is to be 
surmounted by sense and energy, and comes not from 
God, but from man. 

A third set of obstacles is often interposed by human 
laws. Ptestrictions on migration and restrictions on com¬ 
mercial interchange are such obstacles. The old law of 
settlement which forbade the Buckinghamshire laborer, 
starving on seven shillings a week, to migrate to Lan¬ 
cashire where he might earn twelve shillings, or which 
discouraged his doing so, and the old corn laws, and other 
analogous fiscal enactments, which debarred Englishmen 
from the free use of the rich lands of the Mississippi, 
are specimens in point. No one can call obstacles of this 
sort natural. 

It remains plain, therefore, that even granting the 
premises of Malthus to be complete, and his reasoning 
irrefragable, there can be no necessary insufficiency of 
food, or pressure of population on subsistence, or indispen¬ 
sable demand for the preventive check, till the whole earth 



> , > 




100 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


is peopled up to the limits of its productive powers, or till 
all available land is brought into cultivation; and that 
any pressure of population on subsistence, and consequent 
misery which may arise previous to that distant time, is 
traceable solely to human agency or human short-comings. 
Since, if men were wise and well-trained enough to know 
their interests, and to follow them ; to see their duty, and 
to do it; if they knew what boundless fertile lands lie 
around them, and within reach; if they were energetic 
enough to make the necessary efforts to reach them, and 
to assist their less capable brethren to do so, and to do 
this in time ; if all laws directly or indirectly interfering 
with free expansion and free intercourse were repealed, 
and their lingering consequences neutralized; if, in a 
word, there were only among us thorough freedom, thor¬ 
ough sense, and a reasonable amount of goodness, man¬ 
kind might multiply unchecked, if only they would dis¬ 
perse unchecked.* And that pressure of population on 
the means of subsistence, with all the misery it involves, 
which Malthus held to be not only ultimately, but perpet¬ 
ually inevitable, is — at least in its severer form — mainly 
gratuitous and nearly always premature, and under wise 
regulations ought never to be encountered till that future 
day, of whose distance from our era the following concise 

* J. S. Mill dwells urgently on the necessity of workmen limit¬ 
ing their numbers, if they wish their wages to increase and their 
condition to improve. I wish to show that the object will be as 
effectually gained by dispersion as by limitation. It is not multipli¬ 
cation, but multiplication on a restricted field, on a given area, that 
lowers wages and brings privation. 


X' 

r < 




MALTIIUS NOTWITHSTANDING. 


101 


summary of a number of carefully collected facts will 
give some idea. 

Not to interrupt the argument, I give the details of 
these data and calculations in the appendix. They de¬ 
monstrate that even the most densely populated countries 
in Europe are probably not peopled up to the full num¬ 
bers they might comfortably maintain; that many of 
them fall vastly short of the maximum actually reached 
by others not more favored by nature; and that as a 
whole there is every reason to believe that the European 
continent could support three or four times its present 
numbers. They show that a similar conclusion may be 
adopted with almost equal certainty in reference to a 
great part of Asia, and perhaps the whole of Africa ; that 
probably in Africa, and certainly in the two Americas, 
there are vast tracts of fertile land, with fair, if not 
splendid climates, which are scarcely inhabited at all, and 

t 

others which contain a mere sprinkling of human beings; 
and that in Australasia the case is even stronger. In 
fine, while Belgium and Lombardy, which are the best 
peopled districts in Europe, contain about 400 souls to 
the square mile, Paraguay contains only 4, Brazil only 3, 
and the Argentine Bepublic only 1. From the aggregate 
of these facts we are warranted in concluding that an 
indefinite number of generations and long periods of 
time must elapse before the world can be fully peopled; 
that before that consummation shall be reached we have 
cycles of years to traverse, ample to afford space for all 
the influences which civilization may develop to operate 
to their uttermost extent. 





102 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


But this is not all. Not only are few countries in the 
world adequately peopled, hut none even of the most 
peopled countries are adequately cultivated. England 
has the best tilled soil in the world, though by no means 
the best climate; yet in England the average produce of 
the soil is not half—perhaps not a third —what it might 
be, and what in many districts it actually is. But the 
average yield of France, usually regarded as a very pro¬ 
ductive country, is only half that of England; nay, the 
average yield of the splendid grain-growing provinces in 
America, which ought greatly to exceed that of England, 
falls short of it by one half. Without bringing a single 
additional acre under the plough, the production of the 
world, by decent cultivation, might be easily trebled or 
quadrupled. In addition to this hopeful prospect, we see 
ample ground for expanding still further our conception 
of the amount of human life that might be maintained 
in comfort on the earth’s surface, in the wasted or neg¬ 
lected riches of the sea, in the utilization of lands now 
devoted to the production of needless or noxious super¬ 
fluities, in the more skilful extraction from the materials 
of our food of the real nutriment they contain, and in 
the transfer of much land from pasture to cereals, and in 
other economies too numerous to mention. 

The above considerations prove that the world is in no 
danger of being over-peopled just at present, whatever 
local congestion may exist; that centuries must elapse be¬ 
fore population really presses, or, at least, need to press 
severely on the means of subsistence ; and that civiliza¬ 
tion will have time enough to do its work, to perfect its 




MALTHUS NOTWITHSTANDING. 


103 


resources, and to bring all lands and all mankind under 
its modifying influences. Now, my conviction is, that 
there are certain influences, more or less occult, attendant 
on civilization, and which may be made to attend it yet 
more surely, universally, and promptly than hitherto, — 
which operate insensibly to check fecundity and reduce 
the rate of increase, so that possibly the danger ultimately 
to be apprehended may be the very reverse of that which 
Malthus dreaded ; that, in fact, when we have reached that 
point of universal plenty and universal cultivation to 
which human progress ought to bring us, the race will 
multiply too slowly rather than too fast. One such influ¬ 
ence may be specified with considerable confidence, — 
namely, the tendency of cerebral development to 

LESSEN FECUNDITY.* 

* It was at one time fancied that a second physiological law might 
be made good, as operating in the same direction. Mr. Doubleday 
and others, arguing from the facts that scanty nutriment often stim¬ 
ulated reproduction, as rich soils and abundant food in many cases 
checked it, drew the conclusion that merely ample and sufficient 
nourishment (such as the progress of civilization might be expected 
to bring to all men) would progressively lower the average fecundity 
of the race. But I believe further investigation has not favored this 
theory, at least certainly not in the broad extent and jmsitive form 
in which it was first stated by Mr. Doubleday. But loose as are both 
his arguments and statements, I think it is scarcely possible not to 
recognize some residuum of suggestive truth, at least in several of 
them ; and Mr. Spencer’s antagonistic theory ajipears to be laid down 
in too unmitigated a form. My own strong opinion is, that other 
physiological causes of anti-fecund tendency are yet to be discovered ; 
> and that races, nations, and families would not so often die out, were 
it not so. It is impossible to read the Eighteenth Chapter of Mr. 





104 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


To dwell on the various evidences which might be ad¬ 
duced to establish the existence of this tendency would 
obviously be out of place in a work designed for general 
perusal, and the subject could only be adequately discussed 
in a physiological treatise. I shall, therefore, not attempt 
any proof or elucidation here. Meantime it is a great 
satisfaction to me to find, since these pages were written 
(now some years ago), that one of our most eminent and 
profound thinkers, Mr. Herbert Spencer, has arrived at 
almost an identical conclusion, though starting from a 
different stand-point, pursuing a far more systematic and 
strictly scientific train of reasoning, and working on a vast 
induction of facts drawn from all forms of organic life. 
He not only concludes, as I do, that fecundity diminishes 
with that intellectual and moral development of the race 

Darwin’s great work on Domestication without recognizing how far 
we yet are from having got to the bottom of this question, and with¬ 
out receiving a strong conviction of the existence of a variety of 
hidden causes affecting the fertility of animals, especially when in 
what we may term, for them, a state of civilization. The modus 
operandi of some of these influences may be conjectured ; others 
appear at present quite inexplicable ; but all confirming Mr. Dar¬ 
win’s conclusion as u to the remarkable and specific power which 
changed conditions of life possess of acting repressively on the re¬ 
productive system.” The non-breeding of tamed Indian elephants 
— though living in their native country and climate, well treated, 
allowed considerable freedom, amply supplied with food, and in per¬ 
fect health — seems to me a singularly suggestive phenomenon. It 
looks almost analogous to the cases of tribes and races, which have* 
died or are dying out in the midst of plenty, under the mysterious 
influence of some mental condition like depression of spirits, despond- ' 
ency, restraint, the gene of a settled life, &c., &c. It appears to be 



MALTHUS NOTWITHSTANDING. 


103 


which constitutes, causes, and results from what we call 
civilization, hut he appears irrefragably to demonstrate 
(what I could do little more than surmise) that such di¬ 
minished fecundity and reduction in the rate of increase 
must physiologically ensue from mental action and ad¬ 
vance.* The chief difference between our views seems to 
be that lie conceives this corrective process must arise 
specifically if not directly from the stimulus given to the 
brain and nervous system by the perpetual struggle for 
subsistence; while I should be inclined to hope that a 
sound career of progress, once inaugurated, would continue, 
and bring with it that cerebral development which is the 
corrective of undue fertility, even though free expansion 
into wider areas should have made the pressure of that 
struggle almost unfelt.f 

in those animals which, for nervous development and intelligence, 
most resemble man, and which share the subtle and complex influences 
of that artificial life which we call civilization , that we find the most 
curious and anomalous modifications of fecundity. May it not be 
abnormal cerebral culture in the tamed elephant which so strangely 
interferes with the procreative tendency or power ? as in the case of 
barren marriages which are observably so frequent among persons 
of preponderatingly cephalic temperaments. 

* “ Principles of Biology,” II. chap. 13, which is a masterpiece of 
rigid reasoning, and fine but carefully controlled imagination. 

t The continuous pressure which he anticipates, however, he does 
not regard as a necessary cause of suffering : “ The higher nervous 
development and greater expenditure in nervous action, here de¬ 
scribed as indirectly brought about by increase of numbers, and as 
thereafter becoming a check upon the increase of numbers, must not 
be taken to imply an intenser strain, — a mentally laborious life. 
The greater emotional and intellectual power and activity above 
5* 





10G 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


Mr. Spencer’s ultimate conclusion is as follows: — 

“ It is manifest that in the end pressure of population and its 
accompanying evils will disappear; and will leave a state of things 
requiring from each individual no more than a normal and pleasurable 
activity. Cessation in the decrease of fertility implies cessation in 
the development of the nervous system; and this implies a nervous 
system that has become equal to all that is demanded of it, — has 
not to do more than is natural to it. But that exercise of faculties 
which does not exceed what is natural constitutes gratification. In 
the end, therefore, the obtainment of subsistence and the discharge 
of all the parental and social duties will require just that kind and 
amount of action needful to health and happiness. 

“ The necessary antagonism of Individuation and Genesis then, not 
only iulfils with precision the a priori law of maintenance of race, 
from the Monad up to Man, but insures the final attainment of the 
highest iorm of this maintenance, — the form in which the amount 
of life shall be the greatest possible, and the births and deaths the 


contemplated must be understood as becoming, by small increments, 
organic, spontaneous, and pleasurable. As, even when relieved from 
the pressure of necessity, large-brained Europeans voluntarily enter 
on enterprises and activities which the savage could not keep up even 
to satisfy urgent wants ; so their still larger brained descendants will, 
in a still higher degree, find their gratifications in careers entailing 
still greater mental expenditures. This enhanced demand for ma¬ 
terials to establish and carry on the psychical functions will be a 
constitutional demand. We must conceive the type gradually so 
modified, that the more developed nervous system irresistibly draws 
off, for its normal and enforced activities, a larger proportion of the 
common stock of nutriment, and while thus increasing the intensity, 
completeness, and length of the individual life, necessarily diminish¬ 
ing the reserve applicable to the setting up of new lives, — no longer 
required to be so numerous.” — Principles of Biology , Vol. II. p. 
520. 



MALTHUS NOTWITHSTANDING. 


1C7 


fewest possible. The excess of fertility has rendered the process of civ¬ 
ilization inevitable; and the process of civilization must inevitably 
diminish fertility , and at last destroy its excess. From the beginning, 
pressure of population has been the proximate cause of progress. It 
produced the original diffusion of the race. It compelled men to 
abandon predatory habits and take to agriculture. It led to the 
clearing of the earth’s surface. It forced men into the social state ; 
made social organization inevitable; and has developed the social 
sentiments. It has stimulated to progressive improvements in pro¬ 
duction, and to increased skill and intelligence. It is daily thrust¬ 
ing us into closer contact and more mutually dependent relationships. 
And after having caused, as it ultimately must, the due peopling of 
the globe, and the raising of all its habitable parts into the highest 
state of culture ; after having brought all processes for the satisfac¬ 
tion of human wants to perfection ; after having, at the same time, 
developed the intellect into complete competency for its work, and 
the feelings into complete fitness for social life, — the pressure of 
population, as it gradually finishes its work, must gradually bring 
itself to an end.” * 

In fine, that pressure of population on the means of 
subsistence, which was originally fancied to doom the 
human race to perpetual struggle, discomfort, and misery, 
and to frown away all dreams for its steady progress and 
ultimate perfectibility, is the very instrumentality through, 
which that final issue is wrought out; and through which, 
if man were only reasonably intelligent, it might be 
wrought out with no more suffering or gene in the process 
than is requisite to supply the needful stimulus to the 
natural inertia of the undeveloped brain. The necessity for 
exertion is all that Malthus’s law indispensably implies and 
involves, — and this exertion is of itself or soon becomes 


* “ Principles of Biology,” Part vL, § 376. 



108 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


a pleasure. The righteousness, wisdom, and beneficence 
of the arrangement are thus vindicated the moment we 
catch a glimpse of “ its perfect work.” 

Another formidable obstacle to the realization of our 
ideal has now to be considered, — the tendency in civilized 
societies to multiply the race from its inferior specimens. 






III. 

CIVILIZATION ANTAGONISTIC 

TO 

THE LAW OF “NATURAL SELECTION.” 
















. 






























. 






NON-SUE VIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 



VERY one now is familiar with the Darwinian 


JLU. theory of the origin of species, at least in its main 
principles and outlines; and nearly all men qualified to 
form an opinion are convinced of its substantial truth. 
That theory explains how races of animals vary as ages 
roll on, so a,s to adapt themselves to the changing external 
conditions which those ages bring about. At every given 
moment, in every given spot on the earth’s surface, a 
“ struggle for existence ” is going on among all the forms 
of organic life, animal and vegetable, then and there alive; 
a struggle in which, as there is not room for all, the weaker 
and less adapted succumb, while the stronger and better 
adapted survive and multiply. As surrounding circum¬ 
stances, climatic or geological, vary and are modified, 
corresponding variations (such as are always incidentally 
appearing among the offspring of all creatures) in the inhab¬ 
itants of each district crop up, increase, spread, and become 
permanent. The creatures that are most in harmony with 
surrounding circumstances have a manifest daily and hour¬ 
ly advantage over those which are less in harmony: live 
when they die; flourish when they fade; endure through 



112 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


what kills others; can find food, catch prey, escape en¬ 
emies, when their feebler, slower, blinder brethren are 
starved and slain.* Thus the most perfect specimens of 

* u The grand feature in the multiplication of organic life is that 
of close general resemblance, combined with more or less individual 
variation. The child resembles its parents or ancestors more or less 
closely in all its peculiarities, deformities, or beauties ; it resembles 
them in general more than it does any other individuals ; yet chil¬ 
dren of the same parents are not all alike, and it often happens that 
they differ very considerably from their parents and from each other. 
This is equally true of man, of all animals, and of all plants. More¬ 
over, it is found that individuals do not differ from their parents in 
certain particulars only, while in all others they are exact duplicates 
of them. They differ from them and from each other in every par- 
ticular : in form, in size, in color, in the structure of internal as well 
as of external organs ; in those subtle peculiarities which produce 
differences of constitution, as well as in those still more subtle ones 
which lead to modifications of mind and character. In other words, 
in every possible way, in every organ, and in every function, indi¬ 
viduals of the same stock vary. 

“ Now, health, strength, and long life are the results of a harmony 
between the individual and the universe that surrounds it. Let us 
suppose that at any given moment this harmony is perfect. A certain 
animal is exactly fitted to secure its prey, to escape from its enemies, 
to resist the inclemencies of the seasons, and to rear a numerous 
and healthy offspring. But a change now takes place. A series of 
cold winters, for instance, come on, making food scarce, and bringing 
an immigration of some other animals to compete with the former 
inhabitants of the district. The new immigrant is swift of foot, and 
surpasses its rivals in the pursuit of game ; the winter nights are 
colder, and require a thicker fur as a protection, and more nourish¬ 
ing food to keep up the heat of the system. Our supposed perfect 
animal is no longer in harmony with its universe ; it is in danger of 
dying of cold or of starvation. But the animal varies in its off- 



NON-SUIIYIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 


113 


each race and tribe, the strongest, the swiftest, the health¬ 
iest, the most sagacious, the most courageous, — those full¬ 
spring. Some of these are swifter than others, — they still manage 
to catch food enough ; some are hardier and more thickly furred, — 
they manage in the cold nights to keep warm enough ; the slow, the 
weak, and the thinly clad soon die off. Again, and again, in each 
succeeding generation, the same thing takes place. By this natural 
process, which is so inevitable that it cannot be conceived not to act, 
those best adapted to live, live ; those least adapted, die. It is some¬ 
times said that we have no direct evidence of the action of this 
selecting power in nature. But it seems to me we have better evi¬ 
dence than even direct observation would be, because it is more 
universal, viz., the evidence of necessity. It must be so ; for as all 
wild animals increase in a geometrical ratio, while their actual num¬ 
bers remain on the average stationary, it follows that as many die 
annually as are born. If, therefore, we deny natural selection, it can 
only be by asserting that in such a case as I have supposed the 
strong, the healthy, the swift, the well-clad, the well-organized an¬ 
imals in every respect, have no advantage over, — do not on the aver¬ 
age live longer than the weak, the unhealthy, the slow, the ill-clad, 
and the imperfectly organized individuals ; and this no sane man has 
yet been found hardy enough to assert. But this is not all ; for the 
offspring on the average resemble their parents, and the selected 
portion of each succeeding generation will therefore be stronger, 
swifter, and more thickly furred than the last ; and if this process 
goes on for thousands of generations, our animal will have again be¬ 
come thoroughly in harmony with the new conditions in which he is 
placed. But he will now be a different creature. He will be not 
only swifter and stronger, and more furry ; he will also probably 
have changed in color, in form, perhaps have acquired a longer tail, 
or differently shaped ears ; for it is an ascertained fact, that when 
one part of an animal is modified, some other parts almost always 
change as it were in sympathy with it.”— Wallace “On Natural 
Selection ch. ix. 


H 



114 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


est of vitality, — live longest, feed best, overcome their 
competitors in the choice of mates ; and, in virtue of these 
advantages, become — as it is desirable they should be — 
the progenitors of the future race. The poorer specimens, 
the sick, the foolish, the faulty, the weak, are slain or drop 
out of existence ; are distanced in the chase, are beaten 
in the fight, can find no females to match with them; and 
the species is propagated and continued mainly, increase 
ingly, if not exclusively, from its finest and most selected 
individuals, — in a word, its elite. Thus is established 
what Mr. Herbert Spencer calls the law of “ the Survival 
of the Fittest.” 

This explains not only those extraordinary changes in 
the form and habits of the same animals which, when 
aided and aggravated by man’s requirements and careful 
management, strike us so forcibly in domesticated races, 
but also those purely natural though far slower modifica¬ 
tions which geological researches have brought to our 
knowledge. Mr. Wallace, in the admirable paper just 
quoted, — which is a perfect model of succinct statement 
and lucid reasoning, — has pointed out how this principle 
of natural selection has been modified, and in a manner 
veiled and disguised, though by no means either neutral¬ 
ized or suspended, in the case of man ; so that neither 
history nor geology enable us to trace any changes in his 
external structure analogous to those which we find in 
such abundance and to such a remarkable extent in the 
case of the lower animals. He adapts himself, just as they 
do, to the altered conditions of external nature, but he does 
it by mental, not by bodily, modifications. As with them, so 



NON-SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 


115 


with him, the best adapted to surrounding circumstances, 
the most in harmony with the imperious necessities of life, 
surmount, survive, and multiply; but in his case the adap¬ 
tion is made and the harmony secured by intellectual and 
moral efforts and qualities, which leave no stamp on the 
corporeal frame. As with them, inferior varieties and in¬ 
dividuals succumb and die out in the eternal and universal 
“ struggle for existence ” ; only, in the case of man, the 
inferiority which determines their fate is not so much in¬ 
feriority of muscle, of stomach, or of skin, as of brain. 

“ In man, as we now behold him, this is different. He is social 
and sympathetic. In the rudest tribes the sick are assisted at least 
with food ; less robust health and vigor than the average does not 
entail death. Neither does the want of perfect limbs or other 
organs produce the same effect as among the lower animals. 
Some division of labor takes place ; the swiftest hunt, the less 
active fish or gather fruits ; food is to some extent exchanged or 
divided. The action of natural selection is therefore checked : the 
weaker, the dwarfish, those of less active limbs or less piercing 
eyesight, do not suffer the extreme penalty which falls on animals 
so defective. 

“ In proportion as these physical characteristics become of less 
importance, mental and moral qualities will have increasing influ¬ 
ence on the well-being of the race. Capacity for acting in concert, 
for protection and for the acquisition of food and shelter ; sympathy, 
which leads all in turn to assist each other ; the sense of right, 
which checks depredations upon our fellows ; the decrease of the 
combative and destructive propensities ; self-restraint in present 
appetites ; and that intelligent foresight which prepares for the 
future, — are all qualities that from their earliest appearance must 
have been for the benefit of each community, and would, therefore, 
have become the subjects of ‘ natural selection.’ For it is evident 
that such qualities would be for the well-being of man ; would 



116 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


guard him against external enemies, against internal dissensions, 
and against the effects of inclement seasons and impending famine, 
more surely than could any merely physical modification. Tribes 
in which such mental and moral qualities were predominant 
would therefore have an advantage in the struggle for existence 
over other tribes in which they were less developed, would live and 
maintain their numbers, while the others would decrease and finally 
succumb. 

“ Again, when any slow changes of physical geography or of cli¬ 
mate make it necessary for an animal to alter its food, its clothing, 
or its weapons, it can only do so by a corresponding change in its 
own bodily structure and internal organization. If a larger or more 
powerful beast is to be captured and devoured, as when a carnivo¬ 
rous animal which has hitherto preyed on sheep is obliged from their 
decreasing numbers to attack buffaloes, it is only the strongest who 
can hold, — those with most powerful claws, and formidable canine 
teeth that can struggle with and overcome such an animal. Natural 
selection immediately comes into play, and by its action these 
organs gradually become adapted to their new requirements. But 
man, under similar circumstances, does not require longer nails or 
teeth, greater bodily strength or swiftness. He makes sharper 
spears, or a better bow, or he constructs a cunning pitfall, or 
combines in a hunting party to circumvent his new prey. The 
capacities which enable him to do this are what he requires to be 
strengthened, and these will, therefore, be gradually modified by 
‘ natural selection,’ while the form and structure of his body will 
remain unchanged. So when a glacial epoch comes on, some ani¬ 
mals must acquire warmer fur, or a covering of fat, or else die of cold. 
Those best clothed by nature are, therefore, preserved by natural 
selection. Man, under the same circumstances, will make himself 
warmer clothing and build better houses ; and the necessity of 
doing this will react upon his mental organization and social condi¬ 
tion, will advance them while his natural body remains naked as 
before. 

“ When the accustomed food of some animal becomes scarce or 




NON-SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 


117 


totally fails, it can only exist by becoming adapted to a new kind of 
food, a food perhaps less nourishing and less digestible. ‘ Natural 
selection’ will now act upon the stomach and intestines, and all 
their individual variations will be taken advantage of to modify the 
race into harmony with its new food. In many cases, however, it is 
probable that this cannot be done. The internal organs may not 
vary quick enough, and then the animal will decrease in numbers 
and finally become extinct. But man guards himself from such 
accidents by superintending and guiding the operations of nature. 
He plants the seed of his most agreeable food, and thus procures a 
supply independent of the accidents of varying seasons or natural 
extinction. He domesticates animals which serve him either to 
capture food or for food itself, and thus changes of any great extent 
in his teeth or digestive organs are rendered unnecessary. Man, 
too, has everywhere the use of fire, and by its means can render 
palatable a variety of animal and vegetable substances, which he 
could hardly otherwise make use of, and thus obtains for himself a 
supply of food far more varied and abundant than that which any 
animal can command. 

Thus man, by the mere capacity of clothing himself, and making 
weapons and tools, has taken away from Nature that power of 
changing the external form and structure which she exercises over 
all other animals. As the competing races by which they were 
surrounded, the climate, the vegetation, or the animals which serve 
them for food, are slowly changing, they must undergo a corre¬ 
sponding change in their structure, habits, and constitution, to keep 
them in harmony with the new conditions, — to enable them to 
live and maintain their numbers. But man does this by means of 
his intellect alone ; which enables him with an unchanged body 
still to keep in harmony with the changing universe. 

“ From the time, therefore, when the social and sympathetic feel¬ 
ings came into active operation, and the intellectual and moral 
faculties became fairly developed, man would cease to be influenced 
bv 4 natural selection ’ in his physical form and structure ; as an 
animal he would remain almost stationary ; the changes of the 




118 


ENIGMAS- OF LIFE. 


surrounding universe would cease to have upon him that powerful 
modifying effect which they exercise over other parts of the organic 
world. But from the moment that his body became stationary, 
his mind would become subject to those very influences from which 
his body had escaped ; every slight variation in his mental and 
moral nature which should enable him better to guard against 
adverse circumstances, and combine for mutual comfort and pro¬ 
tection, would be j>reserved and accumulated ; the better and higher 
specimens of our race would therefore increase and spread, the 
lower and more brutal would give way and successively die out, 
and that rapid advancement of mental organization would occur, 
which has raised the very lowest races of man so far above the 
brutes (although differing so little from some of them in physical 
structure), and, in conjunction with scarcely perceptible modifica¬ 
tions of form, has developed the wonderful intellect of the Germanic 
races.” 

But this is by no means the whole of the case. As we 
follow out the reflections suggested by this argument, an 
entirely new series of consequences and operations opens 
before us. We perceive that the working of the law of 
“ natural selection,” and of “ the preservation of favored 
races and individuals in the struggle for existence,” has 
become in tire course of man’s progress not only thus 
modified, as Mr. Wallace points out, and directed to one 
part of his organization (the brain) alone, but positively 
suspended, and in many instances almost reversed. It 
even dawns upon us that our existing civilization, which 
is the result of the operation of this law in past ages, 
may be actually retarded and endangered by its tendency 
to neutralize that law in one or two most material and 
significant particulars. The great, wise, righteous, and 
beneficent principle which in all other animals, and in 



NON-SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 


119 


man himself, up to a certain stage of his progress, tends 
to the improvement and perfection of the race, would 
appear to he forcibly interfered with and nearly set aside ; 
nay, to be set aside pretty much in direct proportion to 
the complication, completeness, and culmination of our 
civilization. I do not assert that if our civilization were 
purely and philosophically ideal — perfect in character 
as well as splendid and lofty in degree — this result 
would follow, or would continue ; hut it certainly does 
follow now, and it delays and positively menaces the 
attainment of that ideal condition. My thesis is this : 
that the indisputable effect of the state of social progress 
and culture we have reached, of our high civilization in 
its present stage and actual form, is to counteract and 
suspend the operation of that righteous and salutary law 
of “ natural selection ” in virtue of which the best speci¬ 
mens of the race — the strongest, the finest, the worthiest 
— are those which survive, multiply, become paramount, 
and take precedence ; succeed and triumph in the strug¬ 
gle for existence, become the especial progenitors of future 
generations, continue the species, and propagate an ever 
improving and perfecting type of humanity. 

The principle of the “ Survival of the Fittest ” does not 
appear to fail in the case of races of men. Here the abler, 
the stronger, the more advanced, the finer, in short, are still 
the favored ones; succeed in the competition; exterminate, 
govern, supersede, fight, eat, or work the inferior tribes out 
of existence. The process is quite as certain, and nearly 
as rapid, whether we are just or unjust; whether we use 
carefulness or cruelty. Everywhere the savage tribes of 



120 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


mankind die out at the contact of the civilized ones. 
Sometimes they are extinguished by conquest and the 
'sword; sometimes by the excessive toil which avaricious 
victors impose upon tjie feeble vanquished; often by the 
diseases which the more artificial man brings with him and 
which flourish with fearful vigor in a virgin soil; occa¬ 
sionally they fade away before the superior vitality and 
prolific energy of the invading race in lands where there 
is not room for both: they are crushed, in fact, by the se¬ 
verity of competition; in some cases they sink under the 
new and unsuitable habits which civilization tries to 
introduce among them ; not unfrequently, it would seem, 
from some mysterious blight which the mere presence of 
a superior form of humanity casts over them. But, in 
every part of the world, and in every instance, the result 
has been the same ; the process of extinction is either 
completed or actively at work. The Indians of the Antil¬ 
les, the Bed man of North America, the South Sea Island¬ 
ers, the Australians, even the New-Zealanders (the finest 
and most pliable and teachable of savages), are all alike 
dying out with strange rapidity, — in consequence of the 
harshness, or in spite of the forbearance and protection, 
of the stronger and more capable European. The negro 
alone survives, — and seems likely to survive. He only 
has been able to hold his own after a fashion, and to live 
and flourish side by side with masterful and mightier 
races, though in a questionable relation and with question¬ 
able results. But the exception is a confirmation of the 
general law. The negro is not only strong, docile, and 
prolific, but in some respects he is better adapted to sur- 



NON-SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 


121 


rounding conditions than his European neighbor, conquer¬ 
or, or master; in certain climates he, and not the white 
man, is “ the favored race ”; and for many generations, 
perhaps for ages, in the burning regions about the equator, 
a black skin may take precedence of a large brain, and be 
a more indispensable condition of existence ; or possibly 
the brain may grow larger without the skin growing any 
whiter. The principle of “ natural selection,” therefore, — 
of the superior and fitter races of mankind trampling out 
and replacing the poorer races, in virtue of their superior 
fitness, — would seem to hold good universally. 

So probably it does also, and always has done, in the 
case of nations; and the apparent exceptions to the rule 
may be due only to our erroneous estimate of the true ele¬ 
ments of superiority. In the dawn of history the more 
cultivated and energetic races conquered the weaker and 
less advanced, reduced them to slavery, or taught them 
civilization. It is true that in the case of the Greeks and 
Romans the coarser organization and less developed brain 
of the latter overpowered and overshadowed probably the 
finest physical and intellectual nature that has yet ap¬ 
peared upon the earth; but the Greeks, when they thus 
succumbed, had fallen away from the perfection of their 
palmier days ; they had grown enervated and corrupt; and 
the tougher fibre, the robuster will, and the unequalled 
political genius of their Roman conquerors constituted an 
undeniable superiority. They triumphed by the law of 
the strongest, — though their strength might not lie pre¬ 
cisely in the noblest portion of man’s nature. Intellectu¬ 
ally the inferiors of the Greeks whom they subdued, they 




122 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


were morally and volitionally more vigorous. The same 
may he said of those rude Northern warriors who, at a 
later period, flowed over and mastered the degenerate 
Boman world. They had no culture, but they had vast 
capacities ; and they brought with them a renovating ir¬ 
ruption of that hard energy and redundant vitality which 
luxury and success had nearly extinguished among those 
they conquered. They were then “ the most favored race,” 
the fittest for the exigencies of the hour, the best adapted 
to the conditions of the life around them; they prevailed, 
therefore, by reason of a very indisputable, though not the 
most refined sort of, superiority. With the nations of 
modern history, the same rule lias governed the main cur¬ 
rent of the world, though perhaps with more instances of 
at least apparent exception. Each nation that has domi¬ 
nated in turn, or occupied the first post in the world’s 
annals, has done so by right of some one quality, achieve¬ 
ment, or possession, — then especially needed, — which 
made it for the time the stronger, if not intrinsically the 
nobler, among many rivals. Intellect, and intellect applied 
alike to art, to commerce, and to science, at one period 
made the Italians the most prominent people in Europe. 
There was an undeniable grandeur in the Spanish nation 
in its culminating years towards the close of the fifteenth 
century which gave it a right to rule, and at once explained 
and justified both its discoveries and its conquests. No one 
can say that France did not fairly win her vast influence 
and her epochs of predominance by her wonderful military 
spirit and the'peculiarity of her singularly clear, keen, 
restless, but not rich intelligence. England owes her 



NON-SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 


123 


world-wide dominion and (what is far more significant 
and a greater subject for felicitation) the wide diffusion of 
her race over the globe, to a daring and persistent energy 
with which no other variety of mankind is so largely dow¬ 
ered. Even the Ottoman and Arabian races had special 
qualities or elements of superiority which warranted their 
temporary sway. And if in modern conflicts might has 
sometimes triumphed over right, and the finer and kinder 
people fallen before the assaults of the stronger and harsh¬ 
er, and the events of history run counter to all our truer 
and juster sympathies, it is probably because in the coun¬ 
sels of the Most High, energy is seen to be more needed 
than culture to carry on the advancement of humanity, 
and a commanding will, at least in this stage of our pro¬ 
gress, to be a more essential endowment than an amiable 
temper or a good heart. At all events it is those who in 
some sense are the strongest and the fittest who most 
prevail, multiply, and spread, and become in the largest 
measure the progenitors of future nations. 

But when we come to the case of individuals in a 
people, or classes in a community, — the phase of the 
question which has far the most practical and immediate 
interest for ourselves, — the principle would appear to 
fail, and the law is no longer supreme. Civilization, 
with its social, moral, and material complications, has 
introduced a disturbing and conflicting element. It is 
not now, as Mr. Wallace depicts, that intellectual has 
been substituted for physical superiority, but that arti¬ 
ficial arid conventional have taken the place of natural 
advantages as the ruling and deciding force. It is no 



124 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


longer the strongest, the healthiest, the most perfectly 
organized; it is not men of the finest physique, the 
largest brain, the most developed intelligence, the best 
morale, that are “ favored ” and successful “ in the struggle 
for existence,” that survive, that rise to the surface, that 
“ natural selection ” makes the parents of future genera¬ 
tions, the continuators of a picked and perfected race. 
It is still “ the most favored,” no doubt, in some sense, 
who bear away the palm, but the indispensable favor is 
too often that of fortune, not of nature. The various 
influences of our social system combine to traverse the 
righteous and salutary law which God ordained for the 
preservation of a worthy and improving humanity; and 
the “ varieties ” of man that endure and multiply their 
likenesses, and mould the features of the coming times, 
are not the soundest constitutions that can be found 
among us, nor the most subtle and resourceful minds, 
nor the most amiable or self-denying tempers, nor the 
most sagacious judgments, nor even the most imperious 
and persistent wills, but often the precise reverse, — often 
those emasculated by luxury and those damaged by want, 
those rendered reckless by squalid poverty, and those 
whose physical and mental energies have been sapped, 
and whose characters have been grievously impaired, by 
long indulgence and forestalled desires. 

The two great instruments and achievements of civili¬ 
zation are respect for life and respect for property. In 
proportion as both are secure, as life is prolonged and as 
wealth is accumulated, and as the poor and weak are 
cared for, so nations rise, or consider that they have 



NON-SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 


125 


risen. Among wild animals the sick and maimed are 

ft 

slain; among savages they succumb and die or are sup¬ 
pressed ; among us they are cared for, kept’ alive, enabled 
to marry and multiply. In uncivilized tribes, the inef¬ 
fective and incapable, the weak in body or in mind, are 
unable to provide themselves food ; they fall behind in 
the chase or in the march; they fall out, therefore, in the 
race of life. With us, sustenance and shelter are pro¬ 
vided for them, and they survive. We pride ourselves — 
and justly — on the increased length of life which has 
been effected by our science and our humanity. But we 
forget that this higher average of life may be compatible 
with, and may in a measure result from, a lower average 
of health. We have kept alive those who, in a more 
natural and less advanced state, would have died, — and 
who, looking at the physical perfection of the race alone, 
had better have been left to die. Among savages, the 
vigorous and sound alone survive ; among us, the diseased 
and enfeebled survive as well; but is either the physique 
or the intelligence of cultivated man the gainer by the 
change ? In a wild state, by the law of natural selec¬ 
tion, only or chiefly, the sounder and stronger specimens 
were allowed to continue their species; with us, thou¬ 
sands with tainted constitutions, frames weakened by 
malady or waste, brains bearing subtle and hereditary 
mischief in their recesses, are suffered to transmit their 
terrible inheritance of evil to other generations, and to 
spread it through a whole community. 

Security of property, security for its transmission as 
well as for its enjoyment, is one of our chief boasts. 




126 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


Thousands upon thousands who never could themselves 
have acquired property by industry, or conquered it by 
courage, or kept it by strength or ingenuity, and who are 
utterly incompetent to use it well, are yet enabled by 
law to inherit and retain it. They are born to wealth, 
they revel in wealth, though destitute of all the qualities 
by which wealth is won, or its possession made a blessing 
to the community. In a natural state of society they 
would have been pushed out of existence, stripped of 
their inherited and ill-used possessions, jostled aside in 
the struggle and the race, and left by the wayside to die. 
In civilized communities they are protected, fostered, 
flattered, married, and empowered to hand down their 
vapid incapacities to numerous offspring, whom perhaps 
they can leave wealthy too. In old and highly advanced 
nations, the classes who wield power and affluence and 
social supremacy as a consequence of the security of 
property, do not as a rule consist — nay, may consist in a 
very small measure — of individuals who have won, or 
could have won, those influences for themselves, — of 
natural “ kings of men ” ; the elite lots in life do not fall 
to the elite of the race or the community.* Those pos¬ 
sessions and that position, which in more simply organ¬ 
ized tribes would be an indication and a proof either of 


* Mr. Darwin points out here as a per contra , the validity of 
which is great and indisputable, the good effect of this transmission 
of property in securing the existence of a leisured class adapted for 
literature, government, and thought. “ The presence of a body of 
well-instructed men, who have not to labor for their daily bread, 
is important to a degree that can hardly be overestimated ; as all 





NON-SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 


127 


strength, of intelligence, or of some happy adaptation to 
surrounding exigencies, now in our complicated world 
indicate nothing— at least in five cases out of six — but 
merit or energy or luck in some ancestor, perhaps incon¬ 
ceivably remote, who has bequeathed his rank and prop¬ 
erty to his successors, but without the qualities which 
won them and warranted them. Yet this property and 
rank still enable their possibly unworthy and incapable 
inheritors to take precedence over others in many of the 
walks of life, to carry off the most desirable brides from 
less favored though far nobler rivals, and (what is our 
present point) to make those brides the mothers of a 
degenerating, instead of an ever-improving race. 

But even this by no means presents the whole strength 
of the case. ISTot only does civilization, as it exists among 
us, enable rank and wealth, however diseased, enfeebled, 
or unintelligent, to become the continuators of the species 
• in preference to larger brains, stronger frames, and sounder 
constitutions ; but that very rank and wealth, thus inher¬ 
ited without effort and in absolute security, often tend to 
produce enervated and unintelligent offspring. To be 
born in the purple is not the right introduction to healthy 
energy; to be surrounded from the cradle with all temp¬ 
tations and facilities to self-indulgence, is not the best 
safeguard against those indulgences which weaken the 

high intellectual work is carried on by them-, and on such work 
material progress of all kinds mainly depends, — not to mention 
other and higher advantages.” — Descent of Man, I. p. 169. 

But do the majority of this rich and leisured class occupy them¬ 
selves with “ high intellectual work ” ? 



128 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


intellect and exhaust the frame. No doubt noblesse oblige, 
and riches can buy the highest education, — always ex¬ 
cepting that education by surrounding circumstances 
which is really the only one that tells very effectually 
on the youthful plant. No doubt, too, there are splendid 
and numerous exceptions, — instances in which rank is 
used to mould its heir to its duties, and in which wealth 
is used to purchase and achieve all that makes life noble 
and beneficent. But we have only to look around us, 
and a little below the surface, and then ask ourselves 
whether, as a rule, the owners of rank and wealth — still 
more the owners of wealth without rank — are those 
from whose paternity we should have most right to antici¬ 
pate a healthy, a noble, an energetic, or a truly intellectual 
offspring, — a race fitted to control and guide themselves 
as well as others, to subdue the earth as well as to replen¬ 
ish it, to govern, to civilize, to illustrate, to carry forward 
the future destinies of man ? 

And if it is not from the highest and most opulent 
that we can expect this desiderated posterity, assuredly 
it is not from the lowest and most indigent. The 
;physique and the morale of both the extreme classes are 
imperfect and impaired. The physique -of the rich is 
injured by indulgence and excess; that of the poor by 
privation and want. The morale of the former has never 
been duly called forth by the necessity for exertion and self- 
denial ; that of the latter has never been adequately cul¬ 
tivated by training and instruction. The intellects of 
each have been exposed to opposite disadvantages. The 
organizations of neither class are the best in the commu- 




NON-SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 


12'J 


nity; tlie constitutions of neither are the soundest or 
most untainted. Yet these two classes are precisely 
those which are, or are likely to be, preponderatingly, the 
fathers of the coming generation. Both marry as early as 
they please and have as many children as they please, — 
the rich because it is in their power, the poor because 
they have no motive for abstinence; and scanty food and 
hard circumstances do not oppose but rather encourage 
procreation. Malthus’s “prudential check” rarely oper¬ 
ates upon the lowest classes ; the poorer they are, usually, 
the faster do they multiply; certainly the more reckless 
they are in reference to multiplication. It is the middle 
classes, those who form the energetic, reliable, improving 
element of the population, those who wish to rise and do 
not choose to sink, those in a word who constitute the 
true strength and wealth and dignity of nations, — it is 
these who abstain from marriage or postpone it.* Thus 
the imprudent, the desperate, — those whose standard is 
low, those who have no hope, no ambition, no self-denial, 
— on the one side, and the pampered favorites of fortune 
on the other, take precedence in the race of fatherhood, 
to the disadvantage or the exclusion of the prudent, the 
resolute, the striving, and the self-restrained. The very 

* Galton’s “ Hereditary Genius,” p. 352. “ Certain influences 

retard the average age of marriage while others hasten it.The 

wisest policy is that which results in retarding the average age of 
marriage among the weak, and hastening it among the vigorous 
classes ; whereas, most unhappily for us, the influence of numerous 
social influences has been strongly and banefully exerted, in our 
community at least, in precisely the opposite direction.” 





130 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


men whom a philosophic statesman or a guide of some 
superior nature would select as most qualified and deserv¬ 
ing to continue the race, are precisely those who do so in 
the scantiest measure.* Those who have no need for 
exertion, and those who have no opportunities for culture, 
those whose frames are damaged by indulgence, and those 
whose frames are weakened by privation, breed ad libitum ; 
while those whose minds and bodies have been hardened, 
strengthened, and purified by temperance and toil, are 
elbowed quietly aside in the unequal press. Surely the 

* Those who may be disposed to make light of the injurious 
operation, on the well-being of a community or the improvement of 
the race, of this positive or comparative abstention from the func¬ 
tions of paternity on the part of the true elite of a people, would do 
well to study Mr. Gal ton’s picture of the effect of two analogous 
facts on the progress of Europe during the Middle Ages. In his 
rich and suggestive book on “ Hereditary Genius ” (pp. 357 - 359) 
he points how effectually, though unintentionally, “the Church 
brutalized and demoralized the breed of our forefathers,” by, in the 
first place, condemning to celibacy all those gentler, kindlier, more 
cultured and thoughtful natures who sought refuge in the cloister 
in those troubled times, — leaving only the ruder and coarser organ¬ 
izations to marry and multiply ; and, in the second place, by burn¬ 
ing all the more powerful, free, and daring thinkers of those days, 
and thus as far as possible crushing out the class. “ Having first 
captured all the gentler natures and condemned them to celibacy, 
she made another sweep of her huge nets — this time fishing in 
troubled waters — to catch those who were the most fearless, truth- 
loving, and intelligent in their modes of thought, and therefore the 
most suitable parents of a h 'gh civilization , and put a strong check, 
if not a direct stop to their progeny. Those she reserved, as it were, 
to breed the generations of the future, were the rough and ferocious, 
or the servile, the indifferent, and the stupid.” 





NON-SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 


131 


“ selection ” is no longer “ natural.” The careless, squalid, 
unaspiring Irishman, fed on potatoes, living in a pigsty, 
doting on a superstition, multiplies like rabbits or ephem¬ 
era : the frugal, foreseeing, self-respecting, ambitious 
Scot, stern in his morality, spiritual in his faith, saga¬ 
cious and disciplined in his intelligence, passes his best 
years in struggle and in celibacy, marries late, and leaves 
few behind him. Given a land originally peopled by a 
thousand Saxons and a thousand Celts, — and in a dozen 
generations, five sixths of the population would be Celts, 
but five sixths of the property, the power, and the intel¬ 
lect would belong to the one sixth of Saxons that re¬ 
mained. In the eternal “ struggle for existence,” it would 
be the inferior and less favored race that had prevailed, — 
and prevailed by virtue, not of its qualities, but of its 
faults, by reason, not of its stronger vitality, but of its 
weaker reticence and its narrower brain. 

Of course it will be urged that the principle of natural 
selection fails thus utterly because our civilization is im¬ 
perfect and misdirected ; because our laws are insufficient; 
because our social arrangements are unwise ; because our 
moral sense is languid or unenlightened. No doubt, if our 
legislators and rulers were quite sagacious and quite stern, 
and our people in all ranks quite wise and good, the benefi¬ 
cent tendencies of nature would continue to operate un¬ 
counteracted. No constitutions would be impaired by 
insufficient nutriment and none by unhealthy excess. No 
classes would be so undeveloped either in mind or muscle 
as to be unfitted for procreating sound and vigorous off- 





132 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


spring. The sick, the tainted, and the maimed would be 
too sensible and too unselfish to dream of marrying and 
handing down to their children the curse of diseased or 
feeble frames ; or if they did not thus control themselves, 
the state would exercise a salutary but unrelenting paternal 
despotism, and supply the deficiency by vigilant and timely 
prohibition. A republic is conceivable in which pauperj 
should be forbidden to propagate ; in which all candidates 
for the proud and solemn privilege of continuing an un¬ 
tainted and perfecting race should be subjected to a pass 
or a competitive examination, and those only be suffered to 
transmit their names and families to future generations 
who had a pure, vigorous, and well-developed constitution 
to transmit; so that paternity should be the right and 
function exclusively of the elite of the nation, and human¬ 
ity be thus enabled to march on securely and without 
drawback to its ultimate possibilities of progress. Every 
damaged or inferior temperament might be eliminated, and 
every special and superior one be selected and enthroned, 
till the human race, both in its manhood and its womanhood, 
became one glorious fellowship of saints, sages, and ath¬ 
letes; till we were all Blondins, all Shakespeares, Pericleses, 
Socrateses, Columbuses, and Fenelons. But no nation— in 
modern times at least — has ever yet approached or aimed 
at this ideal; no such wisdom or virtue has ever been 
found except in isolated individual instances ; no govern¬ 
ment and no statesman has ever yet dared thus to supple¬ 
ment the inadequacy of personal patriotism by laws so 
sapiently despotic. The faces of the leading peoples of the 
existing world are not even set in this direction,— at pres- 




NON-SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 


133 


ent notably the reverse. The more marked tendencies of 
the age are three; and all three run counter to the opera¬ 
tion of the wholesome law of “ natural selection.” We are 
learning to insist more and more on the freedom of the 
individual will, the right of every one to judge and act 
for himself. We are growing daily more foolishly and 
criminally lenient to every natural propensity, less and 
less inclined to resent, or control, or punish its indulgence. 
We absolutely refuse to let the poor, the incapable, the 
lazy, or the diseased die ; we enable or allow them, if we 
do not actually encourage them, to propagate their inca¬ 
pacity, poverty, and constitutional disorders. And, lastly, 
democracy is every year advancing in power, and claiming 
the supreme right to govern and to guide; and democracy 
means the management and control of social arrangements 
by the least educated classes, — by those least trained to 
foresee or measure consequences, — least acquainted with 
the fearfully rigid laws of hereditary transmission, — least 
habituated to repress desires, or to forego immediate enjoy¬ 
ment for future and remote good. 

Obviously, no artificial prohibitions or restraints, no 
laws imposed from above and from without, can restore 
the principle of “ natural selection ” to its due supremacy 
among the human race. No people in our days would en¬ 
dure the necessary interference and control; and perhaps 
a result so acquired might not be worth the cost of acqui¬ 
sition. We can only trust to the slow influences of enlight¬ 
enment and moral susceptibility, percolating downwards 
and in time permeating all ranks. We can only watch 
and be careful that any other influences we do set in 




134 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


motion shall be such as, where they work at all, may work 
in the right direction. At present the prospect is not 
reassuring. We are progressing fast in many points, no 
doubt, but the progress is not wholly nor always of the 
right sort, nor without a large per contra . Legislation and 
philanthropy are improving the condition of the masses, 
but they are more and more losing the guidance and gov¬ 
ernance of the masses. Wealth accumulates above, and 
wages rise below; but the cost of living augments with 
both operations, till those classes — the stamina of the 
nation — which are neither too rich nor too poor to fear 
a fall, find marriage a hazardous adventure, and dread the 
burden of large families. Medical science is mitigating 
suffering, and achieving some success in its warfare against 
disease; but at the same time it enables the diseased to 
live. It controls and sometimes half cures the maladies 
that spring from profligacy and excess, but in so doing 
it encourages both, by stepping in between the cause and 
its consequence, and saving them from their natural and 
deterring penalties. It reduces the aggregate mortality by 
sanitary improvements and precautions ; but those whom 
it saves from dying prematurely it preserves to propagate 
dismal and imperfect lives. In our complicated modem 
communities a race is being run between moral and mental 
enlightenment and the deterioration of the physical and 
moral constitution through the defeasance of the law of 
natural selection; and on the issues of that race the des¬ 
tinies of humanity depend. 


Mr. Francis Galton (who had followed the same line of 



NON-SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 


135 


thought as myself, though both, till after the publication 
of our respective speculations, were unacquainted with the 
other’s writings) estimates, almost more gravely than I 
have done, the mischief and the menace of this tendency 
of civilized nations to multiply from their lower speci¬ 
mens. He condemns “ the Peerage as a disastrous insti- 
tution, owing to its destructive effects on our valuable 
races. The most highly gifted men are ennobled; their 
elder sons are tempted [for the sake of means to keep up 
their titles] to marry heiresses [who are habitually sterile]; 
and their younger sons do not marry at all, not having 
fortune enough to support both a family and an aristocratic 
position. So the side-shoots of the genealogical tree are 
hacked off, the leading shoot is blighted, and the breed is 
lost forever.” .... Further on he says : “It is a maxim 
of Mai thus that the period of marriage ought to be de¬ 
layed in order that the earth may not be overcrowded by a 
population for whom there is no place at all at the great 
table of Nature. If this doctrine influenced all classes 
alike, I should have nothing to say about it here, one way 
or the other, as it would hardly affect the discussions in 
this book; but when it is put forward as a rule of conduct 
for the prudent part of mankind to follow, whilst the im¬ 
prudent are necessarily left free to disregard it, I have no 
hesitation in saying that it is a most pernicious rule of 
conduct in its bearing on the race. Its effects would be 
to cause the race of the prudent to fall, after a few cen¬ 
turies, into an almost incredible numerical inferiority to 
that of the imprudent, and therefore to bring utter ruin 
upon the breed of any country where the doctrine pre- 




136 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


vailed. I protest against the abler races being encouraged 
to withdraw in this luay from the struggle for existence. 
It may seem monstrous that the weak should he crowded 
out by the strong, but it is still more monstrous that the 
races best fitted to play their part on the stage of life 
should he crowded out by the incompetent, the ailing, and 
the feeble.” 

Mr. Galton gives us a sort of formula by which we may 
form some faint conception of the magnitude of the evil 
thus wrought — or likely to be wrought — by the opera¬ 
tion of this doctrine. He points out that — of two classes 
in a community starting with equal numbers, but one class 
marrying habitually at twenty-two years of age, and the 
other at thirty-three years — the first class will, in less 
than a century, be twice as numerous, and in two centuries 
six times as numerous, as the second. We have only to 
follow out this thought, and picture to ourselves, if imagi¬ 
nation is equal to the task, the contrast between two com¬ 
munities at the end of either period, one a nation where 
the early marrying class had been the educated, the tem¬ 
perate, the energetic, and the self-restrained; and the other 
a nation where this class had consisted of the reckless, the 
indolent, the vicious, and the diseased. The latter would 
probably have degenerated nearly to the race of Papuans; 
the former might have surpassed even the Athenians in 
their palmiest days.* 

* Mr. Galton (p. 361) has a passage which suggests a wide and 
fertile field of investigation, — namely, how far the decay of old 
civilizations (one of the perplexing phenomena of history) may be 
traceable to the circumstance we have been considering. “ In an old 



NON-SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 


137 


Mr. Darwin,* who has done me the honor to quote 
a monograph which I wrote four or five years ago on 
this subject, equally regards the operation in question as 
a most serious one; and though he mentions a number 
of compensating influences, he evidently does not con¬ 
sider them as at all adequate or effectual. “ With sav- 

civilization the agencies are more complex. Among the active, am¬ 
bitious classes none but the inheritors of fortune are likely to marry 
young. Those whose future fortune is not insured can scarcely suc¬ 
ceed well and rise high in society, if they hamper themselves with a 

wife and children in their early manhood.Thence result the 

evils I have already described; in speaking of the marriages of eldest 
sons with heiresses, and of the suppression of the marriages of the 
younger sons. Again, there is a constant tendency of the best men 
in a country to settle in the great cities, where marriages are less pro¬ 
lific, and children less likely to live. Owing to these several causes, 
there is a steady check in an old civilization on the fertility of the abler 
classes : the improvident and unambitious are those who chiefly keep up 
the breed. So the race gradually degenerates , becoming with each succes¬ 
sive generation less fitted for a high civilization , although it retains the 
external appearances of one : until the time comes when the whole 
political and social fabric caves in , and a greater or less relapse to¬ 
wards barbarism takes place.” I have long been convinced that the 
startling contrast between the France of to-day and the France of one 
or two centuries ago, is in a vast measure due to the dying (or killing) 
out of the old Frankish and Norman elements, and the growing pre¬ 
dominance of the Celtic one. Probably the equally startling differ¬ 
ence between the America of Washington and the America of An¬ 
drew Johnson may be greatly traced to the immigration of old days 
consisting of Cavaliers and Pilgrim Fathers, and the recent immigra¬ 
tion being made up of Irish cottiers and German boors, and loose or 
criminal fugitives from everywhere. 

* u Descent of Man,” I. p. 168. 









138 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


ages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; 
and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous 
state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do 
our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build 
asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we 
institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their 
greatest skill to save the life of every one to the last 
moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination 
has preserved thousands, who, from a weak constitution, 
would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus 
the weak members of civilized societies propagate their 
kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of 
domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly 
injurious to the race. It is surprising how soon a want 
of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degener¬ 
ation of a domestic race: but, excepting in the case of 
man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow 
his worst animals to breed.” 

It cannot be denied then that the tendency, in commu¬ 
nities of advanced and complicated civilization, to multiply 
from their lower rather than their higher specimens, con¬ 
stitutes one of the most formidable dangers with which 
that civilization is threatened ; and, if not counterworked 
in time, must bring about eventually the physical, and 
along with that the moral and intellectual deterioration of 
the race. But in civilization itself — in the spreading in¬ 
telligence, in the matured wisdom, in the ripened self- 
control, in the social virtues, which civilization nurtures 
and in which it ought to culminate — may be found, ought 
to be found, and, we hope, will be found, the counteracting 




NON-SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 


139 


influences required. A few of these may be briefly inti¬ 
mated. The longer lives, the sounder health, the smaller 
mortality in infancy, among the better classes (using the 
word “ better ” to include all the elements of true superior¬ 
ity), will do something to antagonize the greater fertility 
of the inferior. As political wisdom improves, forced upon 
us by increasing social perils, by severe experience, and by 
exhaustive error, I consider that pauperism — and with it 
the propagation of paupers — will be nearly extinguished 
by the control and organization of charity, and the ulti¬ 
mate abolition of compulsory poor-rates. Even now we 
are beginning, at least, to look in that direction; and, as I 
pointed out in the first chapter, pauperism is the result of 
our fostering, if not actually our own creation. I notice 
that there are countries in which it exists in a very miti¬ 
gated form, even if at all. I do not think it over-sanguine 
to anticipate the time when wealth, under wider views 
of economic science, may be far more equitably and be¬ 
neficently distributed than now. We may conceive even, 
and should aspire after, such a rational and sober simpli¬ 
city of living, that marriage would become prudent and easy 
to thousands of the middle and upper classes, to whom it 
now seems an absolute impossibility. The higher orders 
of society would become less extravagantly provident as 
the lower orders learned to be reasonably so. It does not 
seem to me quite unreasonable to hope that the means, or 
at least the prospect, of being able to maintain children 
shall be regarded practically as an essential prerequisite to 
producing them, — probably under the control of an en¬ 
lightened social opinion, — possibly, as is not unknown in 





140 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


certain continental States.* under legal pressure, I can¬ 
not see why, — when the working classes are educated in 
some proportion to those now above them, and possess 
property of their own, — whether in acres, or consols, or 
shares, as they assuredly may do, and soon will,*)* —- they 
should not become so provident and so well conditioned, 
that they will be no unfit fathers for coming generations. 
For we must never forget that it is not poverty, but squa¬ 
lor,— not a hard life, but insufficient nutriment, — not 
strenuous bodily exertion, but excessive and exhausting toil, 
*—that disqualify men from transmitting a sound physical 
and mental constitution to their offspring. A sanified city 
population and a well-fed agricultural population may be 
not only a wholesome but a necessary element to share the 
functions of paternity with the more elaborately prudent 
and cerebrally over-developed classes higher in the social 
scale. Lastly, I look forward to a not very distant day, 
when, as the moral tone of society advances, and men rise 
to some larger and more vivid perceptions of their mutual 
obligations, the propagation of vitiated constitutions, as 
well as of positive disease, will be universally condemned 
as culpable, and possibly prohibited as criminal. Some 
classes and communities have already, from time to time, 
reached this slight rising-ground in social virtue, in refer¬ 
ence to the three fearful maladies of insanity, leprosy, and 
cretinism. Surely a further progress in knowledge and 

* Laing’s “ Notes of a Traveller.” “ Travels in Sweden and Nor¬ 
way.” 

t See “ Quarterly Review,” January, 1872, “ Proletariat on a 
False Scent.” 



NON-SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 


141 


reflection, and a somewhat wider range of sympathy, may 
extend the list to scrofula, syphilis, and consumption. I 
can discern no reason — beyond our own halting wisdom 
and deficient sense of right, the strange ignorance of some 
classes, and the stranger senselessness of others, our utterly 
wonderful and persistent errors in political and social phi¬ 
losophy in nearly every line — why a very few generations 
should not have nearly eliminated from the community 
those who ought not to breed at all, and have taught pru¬ 
dence to those who ought to breed only in moderate and 
just proportions. 

In comparing the conclusions arrived at in this chapter 
with those of the preceding one, a certain prima facie 
inconsistency is observable, which must not be evaded or 
ignored. If that gradual decrease in fecundity which, in 
the ripeness of time, will render the population of the 
earth naturally and without effort stationary, is to result, 
as we anticipate, mainly from the increased culture and 
development of brain which civilization brings about, it 
seems obvious to infer that such decrease will take place 
earliest and most decidedlv in the classes and races most 

«j 

marked by cerebral superiority, that is, by mental power 
and moral pre-eminence. If the cultivation of the higher 
elements of humanity lias, as we allege, the distinctive 
tendency, in the long run, and on a general survey, to 
retard the rate of increase of the species, then this retard¬ 
ing operation should be strong and manifest in proportion 
to the spread of that cultivation, and in those quarters 
where its progress and predominance are most undeniable. 



142 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


If so, the tendency of man in the more civilized stages 
of society to multiply rather from his lower than his 
higher forms, which in this chapter we have been deplor¬ 
ing and would seek to check, would appear to be not only 
one of the greatest dangers and drawbacks of civilization, 
but precisely its most inevitable issue; and the very 
advance of improvement and cerebral culture, to which 
we look ultimately for the solution of the problem and 
the perfection of the race, would seem to negative that 
prospect, by withdrawing, pro tanto and pari passu, from 
the privileges of paternity the best qualified portion of 
the community, and virtually throwing the function of 
continuing the race mainly upon the classes least capable 
of transmitting healthy organizations and fine intellects 
to their offspring. If the superior sections and speci¬ 
mens of humanity are to lose relatively their procreative 
power in virtue of and in proportion to that superiority, 
how is culture or progress to be propagated so as to benefit 
the species as a whole, and how are those gradually 
amended organizations from which we hope so much to 
be secured ? If, indeed, it were ignorance, stupidity, and 
destitution, instead of mental and moral development, 
that were the sterilizing influences, then the improvement 
of the race would go on swimmingly, and in an ever- 
accelerating ratio. But since the conditions are exactly 
reversed, how should not an exactly opposite direction be 
pursued ? How should the race not deteriorate, when 
those who morally and hygienically are fittest to perpet¬ 
uate it are (relatively), by a law of physiology, those least 
likely to do so ? Does it not appear as if Nature herself 




NON-SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 


143 


were pursuing a pernicious course, precisely analogous to 
that which Mr. Galton attributes to the Church in the 
Middle Ages, and as if the very influence which we 
pointed out in the last chapter as rendering the perfecta- 
tion of the race feasible, must have a distinctively antag¬ 
onistic operation ? 

The reply to the foregoing objection is simply this : 
in the preceding chapter we were considering specifically 
the. influence of natural laws, more or less occult, but all 
self-operating and involuntary, which reduced fecundity 
as cerebral development advanced and spread. In the 
present chapter we have been dealing exclusively with 
voluntary human influences, with the operation of social 
tendencies and regulations in causing an abnormal and 
not natural withdrawal (relatively) from the function of 
perpetuating the race, on the part of the classes fittest for 
that duty. The former influence will work out its benefi¬ 
cent issues gradually and in the fulness of time ; the 
latter is operating artificially and mischievously under 
our eyes. True culture, as it spreads, — the influence of 
a really enlightened civilization, in our age and country, — 
ought to have a double operation; in the creation, on one 
side, of a class of healthy and educated and laborious, 
but no longer stinted poor, whose redundant fertility will 
be controlled at once by greater providence and more 
developed brains, and, on the other side, in the growth of 
wiser and more right-minded superior classes, estimating 
more truly the vital essentials of a happy and worthy 
existence, less fearing a social fall, and less ambitious of a 
social rise, less straitened and less deterred from marriage 




144 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


than at present, and therefore both positively and rela¬ 
tively more prolific. The problem of progress may thus 
be successfully wrought out, in perfect conformity with 
the physiological laws we had assumed, by the mitigated 
fecundity of the multitude in proportion to their culture 
and social elevation, and the simultaneously augmented 
fecundity of the ranks above them, as they learn the true 
philosophy of life. 

I think it may serve the elucidation of a subject, the im¬ 
portance of which can scarcely be exaggerated, if I subjoin 
here a criticism by one of our subtlest and finest thinkers, 
which appeared in “ The Spectator ” when my argument 
was first propounded, as well as my rejoinder: — 

“.... No doubt the laws of property do secure to a vast num¬ 
ber the means of living and of giving life to others who would not 
seem well qualified for ‘ the struggle of existence/ and who might 
have succumbed if they had had to win the means of living for them¬ 
selves by shouldering their own way in life. Still, not only does 
this tell as strongly for the energetic who inherit as for the dilettanti 
who inherit, not only does it leave it cpiite as certain as ever that those 
who have no moral capacity to rise will scarcely fail to fall, will be 
quick to lose their inheritance to those who would have had power 
to gain it, — not only is this so, but in fact this transmission of a 
great bulk of property to persons not well fitted to make or save it, 
is a necessary condition of detecting and developing capacities, of' 
the first value to our race, which would be utterly drowned and lost 
in the mere conflict for material sustenance. No test could be coarser 
or more ineffectual of the sort of intellectual and moral energy 
which gives value to life, than the test of ability to win money with¬ 
out the help ol accumulated capital. Such a test would put out 
of court at one blow, as unfit for ‘the struggle of existence/ three 




NON-SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 


145 


fourths of the religious teachers, the thinkers, the discoverers, the 
poets, the artists, the philanthropists, the reformers. If we are to 
assume that all who inherit are drones, unless they show the power 
to win what they inherit, we should have to assume that there is no 
true sort of energy at all, except it admits of diversion into a chan¬ 
nel wherein pounds, shillings, and pence could be rapidly accumu¬ 
lated. And it is obvious enough that such a test would he quite false. 

“ Still, what we have said as yet is hut preliminary to the true 
answer to the essayist we refer to. The real answer to him is this, 
— that directly you reach man in the ascending stages of animal 
life, you reach a point where the competitive principle of ‘ natural 
selection ’ is more or less superseded by a higher principle, of which 
the key-note is not, ‘Let the strong trample out the weak,’ but, ‘Let 
the strong sacrifice themselves for the weak.’ This is really the law 
of supernatural selection, as distinguished from the law which gov¬ 
erns the selection of races in the lower animal world. It is from 
reverence for this law that men value so highly the healing art which 
helps us to restore the weak instead of to trample them out, — the 
arts of political organization which teach us to feed and clothe those 
who are, without their own fault, hungry and naked, instead of to 
leave them to destruction, — the charitv which bestows a new lan- 
guage on the dumb, teaches the blind to see with their fingers, bright¬ 
ens the hopeless fate even of the idiotic and the insane, nay, reforms 
even criminals if it be possible, instead of exterminating them. The 
history of all Christian and many other churches is at bottom little 
but the history of the growth of human reverence for that law of 
supernatural selection which supersedes the law ruling in the merely 
animal world. If we are to complain that the Darwinian theorem 
does not apply to man, we are complaining that we are in the truest 
sense men at all. The law of self-sacrifice, the law of the Cross, the 
law the religious root of which lies in the teaching that One, ‘ being 
in the form of God,’ made himself of no reputation, and took upon 
himself the form of a servant, to raise creatures infinitely below 
Himself up to His own level, to give them of His life, and breathe 
into them His spirit, is in its very essence and conception a reversal 

7 


J 



146 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


of the law of 1 natural selection/ at least so far as man dreams of 
making himself in purpose and in spirit the executioner of that law. 
Christ tells us not to help to extinguish poor and maimed and blighted 
forms of life, lest they spoil the breed, but to have faith that every 
act of wise self-sacrifice, that is, every transfer of blessings from the 
strong, happy, or wealthy, who can spare them, to the weak, miser¬ 
able, or poor who might otherwise dwindle and perish, is a vindica¬ 
tion of that higher law of supernatural selection, by virtue of which 
the ‘ weak things of the world confound the mighty, and the things 
which are not bring to naught the things which are/ 

“ But then how far is this reversal of the Darwinian law of 1 con¬ 
flict for existence/ in the life of man, a true abrogation of the 
‘ Providential ’ principle, as our essayist calls it, which secures a 
gradual amelioration of the organisms of the animal world ? Can 
we properly say that the principle of competition, so far as it 
secures the recognition of every new faculty, and the appropriate 
reward of strength and industry and ingenuity and invention is 
not wanted, and not in the highest degree beneficent, in the human 
world as well as the world below it ? If not, where are vve to draw 
the line 1 Where does the Darwinian principle end, and the Chris¬ 
tian begin ? Where does it cease to be mischievous, to give aid to 
lower forms of life which we should be glad in the abstract to see 
disappear ? Where does it become beneficent to lend artificial 
succor to those who may transmit the seeds of misery and even 
crime to distant generations 1 Of course these are questions by no 
means easy to answer. Each one must try and answer them for 
himself. But it is easy to perceive that, judging even by the cold¬ 
est light of reason, the race would lose infinitely more of greatness, 
of energy, of variety of activity, of mental and moral stimulus ot 
every kind, by the extinction of the principle of self-sacrifice, by 
tks rigid application of the animal law of natural selection to human 
affairs and purposes, than it could possibly gain in purity of breed. 
In fact, there would be no room at all left for the highest disposi¬ 
tions which we hope to see transmitted to* our children, if the 
‘ catch-who-can ’ principle of natural selection is to govern the 




NON-SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 


147 


conscience and inform tlie motives of men. In endeavoring to 
purify the breed, we should at once extinguish every character of 
the highest calibre, and make the breed no longer worth a future 
destiny at all. In pushing on the competitive principle, pure and 
simple, beyond its legitimate point, and making it supreme over 
the life of a being capable of self-sacrifice, we should only degrade 
man to the level next beneath him, and cut off at a blow the last 
upward step of his progress. Indeed, whatever risk there is of 
artificially preserving and perpetuating low types of humanity by 
our charitable institutions and the higher principles of our civiliza¬ 
tion, there is infinitely more risk of failing to preserve and perpet¬ 
uate that very highest of all types of life which cares more to draw 
up those beneath it than even to climb itself, — or rather which 
climbs itself by virtue, chiefly, of the endeavor to draw up those 
beneath it. Grant, if you will, that the true physician may some¬ 
times save from extinction a life which propagates the seeds of 
crime and suffering. Grant, if you will, that the giver who saves 
the wretched from destruction may sometimes have lent a helping 
hand to physical and moral mediocrities whose posterity will start 
from a very low level of natural advantage. Still you cannot arrest 
the hand of either, without arresting an infinitely grander stimulus 
to all the higher human energies, — intellectual no less than moral, 
— than can for a moment be compared with the loss which may 
result from the perpetuation of some low types of organization. 
The higher virtues, or rather the characteristic impulses and dispo¬ 
sitions in which they are rooted, are amongst the most transmissible 
of hereditary moral qualities. The children of the purely selfish 
start from a selfish basis of character. The children of the self- 
denying start from a freer and nobler capacity for impulse. En¬ 
throne the principle of natural selection, and even if you succeed 
in diminishing the number of transmitted mischiefs, you diminish 
infinitely more the number of transmitted goods. The plan of God 
seems to be to ennoble the higher part of His universe at least, not 
so much by eliminating imperfection, as by multiplying graces and 
virtues. He balances the new evils peculiar to human life by infi- 



148 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


nitelv greater weights in the scale of the good which is also peculiar 
to human life. ‘ Natural selection has its place and its function, 
doubtless, even amongst us. But over it, and high above it, is 
growing up a principle of supernatural selection, by our free par¬ 
ticipation in which we can alone become brethren of Christ and 
children of God.” 

My rejoinder was as follows : — 

Some of the criticisms in the first part of your paper I 
accept and acquiesce in. My argument, I know, was 
stated broadly, and, perhaps, too extremely, in somewhat 
harsh outline, and, as it were, without atmosphere. But I 
believe this is the best plan, in the first instance, at least; 
it arrests attention and makes the meaning clear, and 
enables readers to judge whether the main essence of the 
thesis is correct or not. Modifications and limitations 
come afterwards, and from other quarters; and some of 
these you have helped to supply. But I do not think — 
and I infer that you scarcely think yourself — that you 
have materially invalidated my chief position, which is, 
that civilization and humanity — our tenderness to life 
and our respect for property — have, amid their many 
beneficent and elevating influences, the mischievous oper¬ 
ation of preserving, placing in situations of advantage, 
and enabling to perpetuate themselves classes, individ¬ 
uals, and types of organization at once imperfect, degraded, 
feeble, and diseased, in their moral and intellectual as 
well as physical characteristics. 

Now, this I hold to be a grave etfil; you, on the con¬ 
trary, with your inveterate disposition to look at every 
subject through the misty medium of morals, maintain it 



NON-SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 


149 


to be a great good. You argue that the exercise and dis¬ 
cipline which these damaged and diseased organizations 
afford to healthier and higher ones, in relieving their suf¬ 
ferings, bearing with their infirmities, improving their 
condition, — “ strength sacrificing itself to weakness,” in 
short, — on the whole and in the end cultivate and create 
a nobler average type of humanity than would have ex¬ 
isted were these faulty and bad specimens trampled out 
or suffered to die out, as they would do in a state of 
nature. Well, it is an arguable position, no doubt, and 
has an air of disinterestedness and religious elevation 
which will throw fascination round it for many minds, 
and carry conviction to some. But let us state it broadly 
and without the halo which your language throws round 
it, and follow it out into a few of its applications. Strip 
it naked, and see how it looks then. To judge of the 
symmetry or non-symmetry of a form or figure, you must 
relieve it of all disguising drapery or tinted clouds which 
may conceal any defects and suggest any beauties. To 
estimate the correctness of a logical position, you must 
see if it will bear being announced in a positive, if not 
extreme shape, and in perfectly plain and unattractive, if 
not cynically harsh terms. Men fight best, at least they 
ascertain most speedily and certainly which is strongest, 
when thev fight in the closest conflict, and neither give 
nor take quarter. 

I fully admit that what we want for the human race is 
not simply nor chiefly the strongest and healthiest physi¬ 
cal type, but the highest and noblest physical, intel¬ 
lectual, and moral type combined, that can by all material 



150 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


and psychological influences be produced. I fully recog¬ 
nize, also, that the existence of misery to be relieved, of 
sufferings to be sympathized with, of weakness to be 
borne with, of poverty to be assisted, of diseases to be 
treated, of degradation to be raised, is a most efficient, 
nay, perhaps an absolutely necessary instrument for the 
education and development of the best portions of our 
nature, and for bringing man up to the highest perfection 
that he is capable of attaining. But then I hold that it 
is by curing disease, by eradicating wretchedness, by pre¬ 
cluding poverty, by preventing suffering, that the needed 
moral discipline is to be sought and gained; not by per¬ 
petuating these evils, or permitting them to propagate 
themselves. I would seek the perfectation of the race 
by the extermination, so far as possible, of these things. 
You, or at least your argument, would maintain these 
things, or welcome their maintenance, for the education 
of the race. I would establish hospitals to extinguish 
maladies'; you would establish them to instruct physi¬ 
cians, to train nurses, to exercise the charity of sub¬ 
scribers. I would discourage and eradicate (not “ stamp 
out ”) the hopeless pauper, the congenitally morbid, the 
incurably idiotic or defective, — all degraded types, in 
short; you would treat them tenderly, as “ dispensations ” 
sent for our good, as whetstones for our virtue to sharpen 
itself upon, and allow them to multiply other “ dispensa¬ 
tions” like themselves. As the ascetic fakir rejoices 
when he can devise a new torment to exercise the spirit 
and mortify the flesh, so your self-sacrificing theory would 
hail with joy the advent and multiplication of a one- 




NON-SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 


151 


armed or one-eyed family in the human race, in order 
that the more perfect human beings with two arms and 
two eyes might attain moral eminence by “ sacrificing 
themselves ” for their deficient or mutilated brethren. 
Are not these legitimate, even if extreme, inferences from 
your position ? 

I grant without reserve what you urge, viz., that moral 
qualities are at least as transmissible by inheritance as 
physical ones, and, therefore, that we shall best further 
the aggregate and ultimate perfection of the race by cul¬ 
tivating those moral qualities through generous effort and 
self-denial. There will always be enough suffering and 
evil in the world for this purpose without permitting 
inferior and diseased organizations to propagate, and to 
propagate par preference. But what I pointed out as so 
mischievous and mistaken in the tendency of our actual 
civilization is, that those classes and individuals whose 
moral excellences have been most cultivated by exertion 
and self-control, on whom the loftier influences that you 
so value have wrought their perfect work, and who, there¬ 
fore, are precisely the men and women whom both you and 
I would wish to see the progenitors of the future race, are 
precisely those who arc not so, or not so in preponderating 
or even proportionate measure, and (what is more to the 
purpose) are precisely those whom your doctrine of self- 
sacrifice vnthholds from being so. They stand aside, and 
abstain from marriage, or marry late, effacing themselves, 
“sacrificing” themselves, denying themselves, in order 
(practically, if not designedly) that the luxurious rich 
and the reckless poor, the degraded organizations that have 



152 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


no notion of self-sacrifice or self-control, may breed other 
degraded organizations like themselves.. Or, in conclu¬ 
sion, and once again to state the argument so nakedly 
and broadly that it cannot be misconceived, — when the 
existence and propagation of those degraded types, whose 
perpetuation I deprecate and you defend, has created a 
race of generous and noble natures, philanthropic ascetics, 
and gentle sceurs de charite, disciplined to the last per¬ 
fection of Christian devotion to others, it is not they who 
transmit their tried virtues to future generations, and so 
gradually build up a Humanity such as God designed; 
they remain barren saints and barren vestals ; and, in the 
vast disciplining and ennobling hospital that you would 
make of earth, it is the patients, not the physicians or 
the nurses, — the degraded, not the purified, — the whet¬ 
stones, not the razors, — that are to propagate their species 
and their maladies. The virtues and the virtuous are to 
be sacrificed or postponed to the evils which God sent to 
practise and to train them. 



IV. 

LIMITS AND DIRECTION 


HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 


7 * 





HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 



HE great Enigma of Human Destiny, which has 


_L saddened so many bright hearts and baffled so 
many noble understandings, is apparently not intended 
to be wholly or satisfactorily solved on earth. Man has 
worked at it in all ages, in every land, and under every 
condition, — and constantly in vain. The existence of 
the Individual and of the Bace, their laws, signifi¬ 
cance, origin, and goal, constitute the problem which 
has alternately attracted and beaten back every order of 
intellect and every variety of character. From the earli¬ 
est times of which we have any record we find that men 
had begun to question of these things ; the most ancient 
literature we possess contains speculations upon them as 
ingenious, as profound, and as unsatisfactory as any that 
can be found in the ablest philosophical productions of 
to-day; for alas ! on these topics the veriest child can 
propound inquiries which the wisest sage cannot answer; 
the simplest mind perceives the darkness which the 
acutest and most powerful cannot pierce or dissipate;' 
and the young and buoyant spirit which comes fresh to 
the endeavor finds itself at once hemmed in by the bar- 



156 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


riers and limitations which the intellect that has worked 
longest in this field is unable to remove or overstep. 
Carlyle and Goethe, Bacon and Eousseau, attained no 
nearer to the golden secret than Job or Solomon, Anax¬ 
agoras or Plato. Generation after generation still sends 
forth new speculators, ardent, sanguine, and undiscour¬ 
aged by .the failure of their predecessors, to toil at the 
same Sisyphaean task, to be met by the same impassable 
bounds, to catch the same vanishing and partial glimpses, 
to be conscious of the same incompetency, to confess to 
the same utter and disheartening defeat. One after an¬ 
other they retire from their voyage of discovery weary 
and baffled; some in the exasperation of mortified ambi¬ 
tion, some having learned the rich lesson of humility ; 
a few in faith and hope, many in bewilderment and 
despair; but none in knowledge, — scarcely any (and 
those only the weakest) even in the delusion of fancied 
attainment. 

Why does Genius ever wear a crown of thorns, self- 
woven, and inherent in the very conditions of its being ? 
Why does a cloud of lofty sadness ever brood over the 
profoundest minds ?* Why does a bitterness, as of 

* “ Because the few with signal virtue crowned, 

The heights and pinnacles of Human mind, 

Sadder and wearier than the rest are found, — 

Wish not thy soul less wise or less refined. 

True, that the dear delights that every day 
Cheer and distract the pilgrim are not theirs ; 

True, that, though free from Passion’s lawless sway, 

A loftier being brings severer cares ; 




DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 157 

Gethsemane, mingle with or pervade the productions of 

even the serenest Intelligences, if all human emotion be 

♦ 

not dead within them ? Why have Statesmen, Philoso¬ 
phers, Warriors, and Poets, — men of action and men of 
thought, — men who have sought to influence and men 
who have sought to comprehend Humanity, in its wild 
fever and its strange anomalies, — why have so many of 
them, in the intervals of repose and at the close of life, 
been conscious of an indescribable melancholy and a 
sombre shadow, which yet had in it nothing selfish and 
nothing morbid ? Why, but because these are the minds 
which have seen farther, and penetrated deeper, and com¬ 
prehended more, and deceived themselves less, than oth¬ 
ers ; because, precisely in proportion as their experience 
was profound, as their insight was piercing, as their in¬ 
vestigations were sincere, as their contemplations were 
patient and continuous, did they recognize the mighty 
vastness of the problem, its awful significance, and the 
inadequacy of the human faculties to deal with it; 
because just in proportion as they had higher percep¬ 
tions of what might be or might have been, the contrast 
of what is and of what appeared as if it inevitably must 
be, became more irreconcilable and more appalling; be- 

Yet have they special pleasures, — even mirth, — 

* By those undreamed of who have only trod 

* Life’s valley smooth ; and if the rolling earth 

To their nice ear have many a painful tone, 

They know man does not live by joy alone, 

But by the presence of the power of God.” 

Lord Houghton. 





158 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


cause they felt painfully conscious that they could not see 
their way , and could arrive only at conclusions, both in 
speculation and in actual life, from which it was impossi¬ 
ble to escape, yet in which it was impossible to rest. 
Grand capacities, which seemed adequate to the mightiest 
achievements; inwoven weaknesses which dishonored 
those capacities and rendered those achievements hope¬ 
less and unattainable; germs and specimens of virtues 
approaching the divine, and promising a glorious future, 
yet dashed with imperfections and impurities which seem 
to hint of a low origin and a still lower destiny ; vast 
steps forward to a lofty goal, — recreant backslidings 
towards the bottomless abyss; ages of progress and en¬ 
lightenment, followed by ages of darkness and retro¬ 
gression ; unmistakable indications of a mighty purpose 
and an ulterior career, — undeniable facts which make 
those indications seem a silly mockery; much to excite 
the fondest hopes, much to warrant the uttermost de¬ 
spair ; beautiful affections, noble aspirations, pure tastes, 
fine intellects, measureless delights, all the elements of 
paradise, — 

“ But the trail of the Serpent still over them all.” 

And as, from their watch-tower of contemplation, the 

«• 

wise and good have brooded over these baffling contra¬ 
dictions, what marvel that one by one they should hav§ 
dropped off into the grave, sorrowing, and wondering if 
peradventure behind the great black Veil of Death they 
might find the key to the mysteries which saddened their 
noble spirits upon earth. 




DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 159 


Still we go on ruminating over the stupendous enigma 
from age to age, and occasionally obtaining or seeming to 
obtain new facts and truths bearing upon it, which, how¬ 
ever, are for the most part contributions rather to a clearer 
statement of its conditions than to an elucidation of its 
difficulties. The true solution is perhaps no nearer to us 
than before, but false ones are disproved and discarded; 
positive Science, which is always advancing, lends its aid 
not so much to disperse the darkness as to expose the 
ignes fcttui which we mistook for light; and we are 
brought into a more hopeful state of progress and sent * 
farther on our way, in proportion as wider knowledge 
and exacter observation unroofs one after another of the 
errors in which we had sought a shelter and fancied we 
could find repose. Perhaps, after all, our discomfitures 
hitherto are attributable less to the inadequacy of our 
speculative faculties than to the poverty of our positive 
knowledge; the problem may appear insoluble simply 
because we have not yet accumulated the materials ne¬ 
cessary for approaching it; and the higher branches of 
Physiology may yet point the path to the Great Secret. 

Man is a composite Being, and possesses a complex 
organization. We must use ordinary language, even 
though inaccurate and unphilosophic, so long as it con¬ 
veys to others the same meaning as to ourselves: to affect 
a precision, which in reality exists neither in thought nor 
in the instrument of thought, would be at once to deceive 

and to hamper ourselves. We must accept the common 

• 

parlance of educated men as a rough approximation to 



1G0 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


the truth, and at least as the nearest approximation we 
can, on the whole, make to our conception of the truth. 
We say then, — as we are most of us in the habit of 
thinking, — that Man is made up of three elements, — 
body, mind, and spirit: the Body, which is the material 
organ of our inner being, the seat of the senses through 
which we communicate with the outer world, the means 
by which we move and act; the Mind, which reasons, 
understands, judges, and wills, of which the body is the 
imperfect servant, often the ruthless tyrant, always the 
* sympathizing companion, possibly, as some think, the 
medium by which alone it operates; and the Soul or 
Spirit, that element and ingredient of our nature which 
we believe, or fancy, to be something distinct from the 
understanding, which is the seat of our moral nature, our 
emotions and affections, which is the embodiment of 
our consciousness, which we feel to be more peculiarly 
ourselves , which we think to be undying, in virtue of 
which we live in the future and aspire to the Eternal, 
by which we come into relation with the unseen and 
spiritual world. It is possible, as materialists say, that 
this division may be mere delusion, that we ought to speak 
rather of the Nervous and Muscular systems ; that Mind, 
Thought, may be merely a state or operation of the physi¬ 
cal brain; and that the Soul has no existence whatever, 
but that what we call such is only a finer function or 
development of the reason. But, be this as it may, we 
are compelled to accept this threefold division and employ 
expressions which assume it to be a reality, because only 
thus can we state, or bring our language into harmony with, 



DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 161 


the known facts of our Nature, without having recourse 
to periphrases, qualifications, technical terms, logical and 
metaphysical definitions which — while perhaps they 
insured no higher degree of correctness, hut merely sub¬ 
stituted one inaccuracy for another — wovdd effectually 
confuse and mystify our meaning. 

Man, then, we say, has received from the hands of his 
Maker a composite nature, fitted for the part he is to play 
and the work he has to do. In the consentaneous culti¬ 
vation, in the equal and harmonious development of all 
the elements of this nature, must lie its earthly perfection 
and his earthly destiny. By “ harmonious development ” 
we mean the fullest elaboration and perfectation of each 
element which is compatible with the fullest culture, the 
completest exercise, the healthiest and most vigorous con¬ 
dition of every other; that justly balanced progress towards 
the extreme of capability, in which no part profits or is 
fostered to the injury of the rest. 

Experience, however, soon teaches us that no one of the 
three elements of our composite Being can reach this fullest 
development except ai the expense of the others ; that each is 
capable of an abnormal scope and strength by impoverish¬ 
ing the other components and impairing the harmony of 
the whole, — but only thus. The highest flight, the furthest 
range of each portion of our Nature is purchasable only 
at the cost of full and fair justice to the rest. The per¬ 
fection of humanity is one thing: the perfection of the 
Spiritual, Intellectual, or Animal Man, severally, is a dif¬ 
ferent thing; and they would seem mutually to exclude 
each other. 



162 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


-v 


There can be no doubt that a healthy condition of the 

body greatly contributes to the healthy action of the mind, 

to a clear perception and a sane judgment. It may be 

questioned indeed whether a man with a disordered liver 

or a dyspeptic habit can see things in a precisely true 

light, or take a just view and an unexaggerated estimate 

of their proportions. At any rate, it is certain that any 

weakness or derangement in the corporeal functions has 

a tendency to introduce corresponding disorder into 

the mental operations, — a tendency which only the 

utmost vigilance of observation and the utmost energy 

of will can counteract. A sound constitution is the 

best handmaid to a sound intellect, and only a frame 

naturally strong can carry men uninjured through the 

fatigues of severe and unremitting mental labor. The 
♦ 

brain becomes injured by over-pressure, and the other 
organs and functions suffer secondarily or by sympathy. 
So far, then, we fully recognize that a perfectly sound and 
normal state of the mental element demands and belongs 
to a sound and normal state of the corporeal element 
of our nature, and vice versa. So true is this, that there 
are some cases in which torpor of the mind produces 
maladies of the body; and maladies of the body for which 
mental activity and moral stimulus are the promptest and 
most appropriate remedies. Ennui or apathy is as real a 
source of illness as malaria or alcohol. And we have all 
of us heard of instances in which a sudden shock to the 
feelings or a startling idea conveyed to the mind has re¬ 
stored action to paralytic limbs, life to the languishing, 
and transient strength to atrophy itself. 



DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 163 


But, on the other hand, though the physical frame must 
be kept in a sound and well-disciplined condition in order 
to be a faithful servant and an adequate and effective organ 
of the Mind, it is equally true that the highest develop¬ 
ment of the bodily, and the highest development of the 
mental, powers must be sought for by a very different 
course of training, and cannot (except in abnormal and 
exceptional cases) be attained in the same individual or 
under the same circumstances. The perfection of the hu¬ 
man animal and the perfection of the human being are ; 
probably quite incompatible. Where do we find the most 
astonishing strength, the most wonderful feats of activity, 
the hardiest nerves, the keenest and most unerring senses, 
in a word, the culminating point of the corporeal faculties 
and functions ? In the brutal gladiators of Greece or 
Borne, in the mindless Matadors of Spain, in the filthy 
savages of North America, in the empty acrobats and 
circus-riders of our theatres, in the nearly idiotic prize¬ 
fighters of our pugilistic rings. In the low, narrow fore¬ 
head, the small brain, the scowling brow, the animal ex¬ 
pression of the ancient Gladiator and Athlete, contrasted 
with his quick eye, his spare form, his well-developed mus¬ 
cles, as pliant as whalebone and as hard as steel, his firm, 
well-knit, elastic frame, may be seen a further illustration, 
— an illustration which will be at once confirmed when we 
converse with the dull and unintelligent of the pugilists 
or posture-masters of our country, or take the trouble to 
observe among the circle of our own acquaintances what 
sort of intellects take most kindly to bodily exercises and 
are most eminent for feats of agility and strength. 



164 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


Again : take a man whose whole life, whose every day 
is spent in severe physical labor, — the woodcutter for 
example, — every muscle of whose brawny frame is trained 
and hardened to the ne plus ultra of capacity, whose every 
organ is performing its allotted function to perfection, 
whose every nerve and fibre is glowing with health, to 
whom pain, weakness, and malady are altogether strangers. * 
Call upon that man for even moderate mental effort, and 
you find that a child might overmatch him. I will sup¬ 
pose him a man of education, — there are many such in 
the colonies and the backwoods, — but set him down to a 
problem or a book, and he is certain to fall asleep; task 
his mind in conversation, and he cannot follow you, or 
if he does for a while, he feels as wearied as if he had 
walked fifty miles or felled trees for twelve hours; test 
his intellectual faculties in any way you please, and you 
will find them quite sound perhaps, but incapacitated 
because unexercised. His development has gone in a 
different direction. 

Or let the practised student or the trained literary 
man examine himself as to the times and conditions in 
which he finds himself capable of the highest flight or the 
most severe and sustained toil. Is it when the animal part 
of him is in the healthiest and most natural condition, — 
when the body is nourished with ample and succulent food, 

— when the limbs are wearied with salutary exercise, — 
when he has passed hours inhaling the fresh mountain 
breezes and bringing his muscles into fit development by 
the oar, the foil, or a gallop with the Melton fox-hounds ? 
On the contrary, at such times, although conscious that he 



DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 165 


is then in the most natural and soundest condition on the 
whole , he feels less capable than usual of concentrated 
thought, less disposed for patient and prolonged research, 
more ready to enjoy, less ready to contemplate or to soar. 
Nourishing food clouds his mind; ample exercise brings 
inevitable somnolence; the Soul is, as it were, clogged by 
the rude health of body; the animal nature begins to en¬ 
croach upon the spiritual, or, to speak more correctly, to 
insist upon its dues. 

The conclusion to which all these observations point is 
simply that which the physiologist would arrive at a 
'priori. The brain, he is well aware, is the organ by 
means of which the intellect does its work, — the organ 
of Thought, just as the lungs are the organ of respiration, 
the heart that of circulation, and the nerves and muscles 
those of action and volition. It is a law of physiology 
that every bodily organ strengthens and enlarges in pro¬ 
portion as it is exercised, and shrinks and becomes en¬ 
feebled if it be comparatively unattended to and unem¬ 
ployed. It is in the power of the individual to throw, as 
it were, the whole vigor of the constitution into any one 
part, and by giving to this part exclusive or excessive 
attention, to develop it at the expense and to the neglect 
of the others. Thus the brain of the thinker, and the 
lungs of the glass-blower, attain a partial and abnormal 
development by engrossing the exercise and nourishment 
which ought to have been more equally distributed to all 
the functions; the right arm of the fencer and the left 
arm of the rider become peculiarly strong; and while the 
legs of the pedestrian acquire an exaggerated size and 




166 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


vigor in which the upper extremities do not share, those 
of the Indian of the Pampas, on the other hand, who is 
always on horseback, are feeble, emaciated, and compara¬ 
tively useless instruments. He is insignificant and impo¬ 
tent on foot. A special training and management is 
required according to the result you wish to produce : for 
the pugilist you develop the muscles of the arm, for the 
runner those of the legs and loins; the organization you 
cultivate in the racer is quite different and incompatible 
with that needed in the cart-horse; and in like manner 
the discipline by which is sought the completest and 
most thorough elaboration of the physical or that of the 
intellectual Man is entirely divergent. The fullest de¬ 
velopment of either cannot be united with the harmoni¬ 
ous and equal development of both. To produce the 
highest mental result we cultivate the body only in as 
far as is necessary to keep it in that degree of health 
suited to the favorable and unimpeded operation of the 
brain, caring nothing for its condition of strength or 
agility. To produce the highest corporeal result, we at¬ 
tend to the mind only enough to keep it in that state 
of gentle stimulus and moderate activity which expe¬ 
rience has found conducive to the development of the 
physical capacities. Like skilful generals, we con¬ 
centrate our whole force upon that central division 
of our army with which we intend to operate, taking 
care merely that in doing so we do not impoverish the 
other wings to an extent which would disable them 
from rendering the efficient support which is indispen¬ 
sable. 



DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 167 


What is true of the Body is true of the Mind likewise. 
Its highest condition is an abnormal condition. Its 
loftiest and grandest developments are attainable only at 
the ‘'expense of the corporeal frame and of the natural 
affections. Its greatest achievements are dearly paid for. 
Its most towering pinnacle is also the most perilous 
position it can reach. The mightiest and most glorious 
human Intellect is ipso facto imperfect as a man,— more 
imperfect than many of his fellow-beings. The ordinary 
mental operations and exertions, those in which the 
intellect is merely exercised, not strained, may be carried 
on, not only without injury, but even with benefit to the 
body. But severe and prolonged mental labor, that de¬ 
votion of the whole faculties to the pursuit before them, 
that concentration of the powers on one object or on one 
point, without which anything great or eminent can 
rarely be attained, this, we know, tells terribly upon phys¬ 
ical health and strength. Every year, to the disgrace of 
our Educators and our Doctors, shows us young men who 
break down in the struggle for University honors, or sink 
into permanent valetudinarianism as soon as the unnat¬ 
ural strain is withdrawn. Every physician can point to 
students whose splendid cerebral development has been 
paid for by emaciated limbs, enfeebled digestion, and 
disordered lungs. Every biography of the intellectual 
Great records the dangers they have encountered, often 
those to which they have succumbed, in overstepping the 
ordinary bounds of human capacity; and, while beckon¬ 
ing onward to the glories of their almost preternatural 
achievements, registers, by way of warning, the fearful 



1G8 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


penalty of disease, suffering, and bodily infirmity wliicli 
Nature exacts as the price for this partial and inharmo¬ 
nious grandeur. It cannot be otherwise. The brain can¬ 
not take more than its share without injury to other 
organs. It cannot do more than its share without depriv¬ 
ing other organs of that exercise and nourishment which 
are essential to their health and vigor. The imaginative 
efforts and the frequent and prolonged state of cerebral 
excitation requisite for the production of the finest poetry 
involve inevitable reaction, lassitude, and weakness. 
The profound reflection, the laborious and resolute ab¬ 
straction, by which alone the penetralia of the inner 
world can be explored and the hardest problems of phi¬ 
losophy are to be solved, sap the vital energy to a degree 
that only experience can convince us of, impair the sleep, 
weaken the digestion, and exhaust the frame. Perhaps 
severer than all is the continuity of application needed 
for great achievements either in literature or science. Sir 
Isaac Newton was wont to say that he owed his success 
and whatever apparent superiority over other men he 
might have shown, to his faculty of thinking continu¬ 
ously on the same subject for twenty or thirty hours 
together. But this continuous exercise of one organ is 
precisely the most fatiguing and weakening of all things. 
We may keep in bodily exercise for twelve hours without 
injury or lassitude, provided we vary frequently enough 
the muscles which are brought into play. But who can 
walk, or fence, or hammer, or blow glass for twelve hours 
without injury or peril ? Again, many can use their 
brains for twelve hours, and use them energetically too, 



DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 169 


without being the worse for it, if the subjects of their 
attention are changed from time to time. But this dissi¬ 
pation of the mind over many topics is precisely the 
habit which is antagonistic to all those great achieve¬ 
ments of which concentration and continuity of thought 
are the indispensable conditions. 

Once more. Sleep, sufficient in quantity and sound in 
quality, is essential to the health, strength, and normal 
perfection of man. Yet not only is severe mental appli¬ 
cation unfavorable to sleep and apt to deprive it of that 
character of complete unconsciousness necessary for thor¬ 
ough refreshment and repose, but life is short, the work of 
the intellectual aspirant is multifarious and vast, and the 
residue of time left after the due demands of the body for 
sleep have been satisfied, is seldom sufficient for all that 
has to be learned and done. Hence we find that nearly 
all the loftiest and grandest minds — those, we mean, who 
have pushed forward their intellectual nature to its cul¬ 
minating point — have cut short their hours of slumber, 
have defrauded the body of its needful rest, and have im¬ 
paired its strength and effectiveness accordingly. Severe 
study, too, injures the sight; sedentary habits are incom¬ 
patible with muscular activity, a strong stomach, or serene 
nerves ; yet, without severe study and sedentary habits, it 
is difficult to see how, in our time at least, the summits of 
intellect are to be scaled or the arcana of the Universe 
laid bare. 

It appears, then, that the ultimate development of which . 
the intellect is capable, and its highest possible attain¬ 
ments, can only be reached by an exclusive cultivation and 

8 





170 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


attention which entails upon its physical companion im¬ 
poverishment, weakness, and disease. But this is not all. 
It seems even that bodily pain and disease are not only 
compatible with, but may indirectly contribute to, the lofti¬ 
est efforts of the intellect. They sometimes positively 
enhance its powers. The effect of some disorders and 
of certain sorts of pain upon the nerves tends to produce 
a cerebral excitation; and the stimulus thus communi¬ 
cated to the material organ of thought renders it for the 
time capable of unusual effort.* Men under the stirring 
influence of severe pain are capable of a degree of imagi¬ 
native and ratiocinative brilliancy which astonishes them¬ 
selves and all who have known them only in ordinary 
moods of comfort. Extinct faculties come back to them. 
Torpid faculties become vigorous and sparkling. For¬ 
gotten knowledge is recovered. Marvellous gleams of 
insight are vouchsafed to them. The wonderful elo¬ 
quence of Robert Hall was doubtless greatly owing to the 
stimulating influence of a terrible spinal malady. Dr. 
Conolly mentions a gentleman whose mental faculties 
never reached their full power except under the irritation 
of a blister. Abnormal and unsound conditions of the 
bodily organs sometimes give us glimpses of mental 
powers and possibilities far exceeding anything of which 
ordinary health is capable. The phenomena of some ner- 

* Those who wish to follow up this train of thought may find 
much suggestive matter in Abercrombie’s “ Intellectual Powers,” third 
edition, pp. 140, 141, 142, 285, 291, 297, 310, 363, 274. 

Dr. Wigan, “ Duality of Mind,” pp. 78, 265, 361, 378, 283, 284. 

Dr. Conolly, “Indications of Insanity,” pp. 214, 221. 



DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 171 


vous disorders are positive revelations, and most startling 
ones, of what the human intellect, disengaged from matter 
or under favoring material conditions, might achieve and 
learn. The partial powers alleged to appear in catalepsy- 
are most singular. Insanity, which is clearly a disorder 
of the brain, is not without its strange analogous sugges¬ 
tions. The approach of death — that is to say, the culmi¬ 
nation of disease — has occasionally given wonderful 
depth, clearness, and insight to the mental powers. In 
fact, when we become acquainted with all the remarkable 
cases of these and cognate phenomena on record, it seems 
scarcely exaggeration to say that the supreme point of vigor, 
brilliancy, and penetration of the human faculties can 
only he reached under unsound conditions of the body. 


There can, we apprehend, be no doubt that in proportion 
as a man is deficient in the natural affections, in proportion 
as those sympathies which bind him to individual fellow- 
beings are either originally cold and languid, or have be¬ 
come so by the accidents of life, or have been wilfully 
bounded or suppressed, — in that proportion does he re¬ 
cede from the ideal of a perfect human being. We all in¬ 
stinctively feel that a man of pure intellect, however grand 
and powerful that intellect may be, — a man in whom the 
rational too completely predominates over the emotional, 
— is incomplete and unsatisfactory. He is inliarmoniously 
developed. We shrink from these incarnations of Mind as 
something portentous and unnatural, and leave them alone 
in their desolate and solitary grandeur. Yet it can scarcely 




172 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


be questioned, not only that the most intense cultivation 
of the understanding has a tendency to starve and chill 
the gentler and tenderer affections, but that this suppres¬ 
sion of them is necessary to permit the attainment of the 
very loftiest summits of thought. The conquest of the 
remoter and profounder realms of Reason demands, not 
only the concentrated devotion of the whole intellect, but 
a calmness and serenity of Soul which is unattainable by 
those who still breathe the atmosphere of the domestic 
hearth, and are liable to be swayed and perturbed by the 
emotions inseparable from the love of the earthly, the 
perishable, and the imperfect. Ancient Philosophers, 
Poets, Mystics, Artists, religious Enthusiasts, have all felt 
the same need, all acknowledged the same inevitable price, 
all preached the same cold doctrine, with more or less of 
insight and consistency. The absence of disturbing emo¬ 
tions, the undivided direction and engrossment of the in¬ 
tellect, is the one indispensable condition.* “ Not in vain 

* “ 1 And once more/ I cried, ‘ ye stars, ye waters, 

On my heart your mighty charm renew ; 

Still, still, let me, as 1 gaze upon you, 

Feel my Soul becoming vast like you.’ 

“ From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of Heaven, 

Over the lit Sea’s unquiet way, 

Through the rustling night air came the answer, — 

‘ Wouldst thou be as these are ? — live as thev. 

v 

“ ‘Unaffrighted by the silence round them, 

Undistracted by the sights they see, 

These demand not that the things without them 
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy. 



DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 173 


did the old Rosicrucians — those spiritual aspirants who 
aimed at an earthly immortality and superhuman powers, 
and fancied that some had won them — teach that the ex¬ 
tinction of all earthly passions, fear, love, hate, pity, ambi¬ 
tion, must precede the attainment of the ‘ Arch Secret,’ 
and the initiation into the sublime existence which they 
sought. Not without reason did they feign that all their 
occult knowledge and their wondrous faculties were un¬ 
availing for the aid or protection of those to wdiom they 
’were bound by the sweet ties of human affection or earthly 
interest, inasmuch as the least shade of natural sympathy 
at once struck these abnormal powers with impotence and 
blindness. Those powers are granted, they taught, to him 
only who could become a passionless, impressionless, serene 
Intelligence.” 

The truth is, Peace is necessary to all the higher intel¬ 
lectual operations. Great feats may be done while the Soul 
is tempest-tossed : great heights achieved — no ! — Poets 
may strike out splendid passages, sparkling with passion¬ 
ate beauty and a sort of gorgeous and turbid inspiration, 
and Orators may astonish us with brilliant flights of power 

“ ‘ But with joy the Stars perform their shining, 

And the Sea its long moon-silvered roll, — 

For alone they live, nor pine with noting 
All the fever of some differing soul. 

“ 1 Bounded by themselves, and unobservant 
In what state God’s other works may be, 

In their own task all their powers pouring, 

These attain the mighty life you see.’ ” 


M. Arnold. 




174 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


and pathos, redolent of the excitement which gave them 
birth; and all this may be done while the heart is torn by 
internal conflict or by wild emotion, or yearning with un¬ 
answered love, or sick and faint with passionate desire; 
nay, it may be done while the conscience is heavy with 
the load of recent sin, or distracted in a danger wherein it 
sees no light and is conscious of no strength ; it may be 
done while the spirit is burdened with a hopeless or melted 
with a tender grief, and while the mind is clouded and 
bewildered by strife and pain, and the mistiness of the 
moral vision. But Thought, insight, sound, clear vision 
of the Truth, wisdom at once piercing and comprehensive, 
the noblest and divinest achievements of the Reason, de¬ 
mand serenity of Soul as their imperative condition. Pas¬ 
sion clouds the mental Eye; emotion disturbs the organ 
of discovery: as the astronomer can only rely upon his 
nicest and loftiest observations when the air is still and 
the telescope is isolated from all the tremulous movements 
of terrestrial surroundings, so the Thinker can only see 
justly and penetrate far, when all that could agitate his 
Spirit is buried deep, or put quite away, or laid eternally 
to rest. The conscience must slumber either in conscious 
innocence or in recognized forgiveness; the aspirations and 
desires must be calm, simple, and chastised; the keener 
sympathies must be still; the heart must repose upon a 
love at once serene, satisfied, and certain, — 

u Such love as Spirits feel 
In worlds whose course is equable and pure ; 

No fears to beat away, no strife to heal, 

The past unsighed for, and the future sure.” 



DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 175 


Or the needed Peace must be sought in a sadder and a 
surer mode. There is the peace of surrendered, as well 
as of fulfilled hopes, — the peace, not of satisfied, but of 
extinguished longings, — the peace, not of the happy 
love and the secure fireside, but of unmurmuring and 
accepted loneliness, — the peace, not of the heart which 
lives in joyful serenity afar from trouble and from strife, 
but of the heart whose conflicts are over and whose hopes 
are buried, — the peace of the passionless as well as the 
peace of the happy, — not the peace which brooded over 
Eden, but that which crowned Getlisemane. Perhaps this 
peace — if there be no sourness or morbid melancholy 
mingled with it — is even more favorable than its brighter 
prototype to depth of mental vision and power of intel¬ 
lectual effort; because — though with less of elastic 
energy — its source lies deeper, its nature is more 
thorough, it is less liable to disturbance from without. 
With it 

“ The future cannot contradict the past, 

Mortality’s last exercise and proof 
Is undergone.” 

The solitude of Soul, which is its worst sting, is also its 
surest seal. The deepest discernment and the highest 
wisdom ever proceed either from the throne of the 
crowned, or the grave of the buried, Love. 

If there is something sad in the idea that the brightest 
torch of the mind should be kindled at the funeral pile 
of earthly happiness ; that in the slaughter or suicide of 
the affections should be found the entrance to the inner 



17G 


ENIGMAS 'OF LIFE. 


courts of wisdom; that men should be compelled “ to 
learn in suffering what they teach in song ”: yet it is 
much that griefs arising from crushed or wounded human 
tenderness should be able to find a refuge and a substi¬ 
tute in the loftier and serener realm of thought, — though 
to taste this balm effectually, a man must not only be able 
to trample out his tenderness, but must fed it right to do 
so, — perhaps must have this task made naturally easy to 
him.* 

But to men of gentler and more genial natures — men 
in whose nature Love is as indestructible as Thought, who 
cannot slay their affections, and would not if they could 

— the great drag and penalty upon intellectual progress 
is the sense that it is and must be made at the hazard and 
to the mortification of the warmer sympathies, — often to 
the loss of 

“ The thousand still, sweet joys of such 
As hand in hand face earthly life.” 

* “ Wilhelm yon Humboldt seemed to have acquired this peace 
by closing his mind to all disturbing calls or feelings from without, 

— to have kept his spirit as if it were in an iron safe.” — Thoughts 
of a Statesman. “ Goethe, probably the most powerful and com¬ 
prehensive genius among the modems, appears to have been by 
temperament cold and unsympathizing, — not absolutely heartless, 
but only feeling superficially, — and to have cultivated this coldness 
as an invaluable mental aid.” — Conversations with Eckerman. 
“ It is a great folly to hope that other men will harmonize with us : 
I have never hoped this. I have always regarded each man as an 
independent individual, whom I endeavored to study and to under¬ 
stand, with all his peculiarities ; but from whom I desired no further 
sympathy.” 






DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 177 


The most painful portion of the martyrdom which awaits 

the emancipation and the growth of mind is, that it so 

often compels us to leave those we have loved and lived 

♦ 

with behind; those who once marched side by side with 
us, with parallel steps and equal vigor, grow languid, fall 
behind, tread in our footsteps only feebly, timidly, and at 
a distance, and at length stand still and gaze after us with 
grief, exasperation, or despair; those who used to be our 
sought and cherished comrades in our moments of deep¬ 
est feeling and of highest elevation are now reserved for 
the hours when we unbend ourselves and sink down to the 
simplicities and genialities of fond human affections ; and 
the friend of the inner becomes but the companion of the 
outer life. All this is exquisitely sad; and thousands 
among the searchers after truth “ sicken at the unshared 
light ” they reach at last. 

It would seem, then, that those fond and expansive 
affections which are so essential to the perfect ideal of 
humanitv, and without which we feel it to be defective, 
are hostile to the grandest development of the intellectual 
faculties; and on the other hand that the supremacy of 
these faculties does not favor those softer sentiments and 
sympathies which are among the better portions of our 
nature. A confirmatory indication may be found in the 
comparative and often singular inadequacy of the mental 
powers of the men of wdiom warm-heartedness is the 
predominant characteristic. Why are Philanthropists 
generally so weak, or at all events so wanting in com¬ 
manding talents, and even in common-sense ? Why are 

8 * l 





178 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


their schemes so constantly futile, abortive, and even mis¬ 
chievous ? Why is their career so strewed with failures, 
wrecks, and ruins, — beyond the example of men of 
harder hearts and less generous emotions ? There are, no 
doubt, a few brilliant exceptions; and cases might be 
pointed out in which real, permanent, and signal good ha3 
resulted from the exertions of these worthy men; but the 
good has generally flowed, not from the adoption of their 
plans, but from their zeal having compelled the attention 
of colder and abler men to the work to be accomplished. 
Their views are so often injudicious, and their schemes so 
noxious, that a great portion of existing evils may be 
traced, either in their origin or their present aggravated 
form, to benevolent interferences for their removal; and 
it may be said, with little exaggeration, that in this world 
;/ a large part of the business of the wise is to counteract 
the efforts of the good. 

Much of this apparent anomaly we believe to be sim¬ 
ply explicable by the fact that in these cases one part of 
their nature has been inordinately developed at the ex¬ 
pense of the others, as it must be in all inordinate 
developments. But besides this, there is another cause. 
The extent and severity of human miseries are so enor¬ 
mous, and the deptli to which the roots of them have 
struck is so measureless, that few men of keen or ready 
sympathies can study or contemplate them with a calm 
mind, without either falling into despair, or losing that 
power of patient investigation and passionless reflection, 
from which alone any sound projects for their cure can 
spring. Human tenderness is a sad disturber of human 



DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 179 


intelligence.* In truth those only can safely and service¬ 
ably encounter social evils who can both watch and in 
some measure imitate God’s mode of dealing with them. 
Patience; slow and flank approaches; a dealing with 
roots, not branches, — with the seat, not the symptom 
of the epidemic horror; the preparing , rather than the 
ordaining , of a change or cure : these characterize the 
treatment of the world’s wounds and maladies by Him 
who is “ patient because Eternal,” — together with a 
majestic indifference to, or rather a sublime endurance of 
sorrow, suffering, and sin, during the intervening time, 
however long, till the seed has borne fruit, and the cause 
has worked onward to its issue. Few, we believe, will 

* u Her heart is sick with thinking 
Of the misery of her kind ; 

Her mind is almost sinking, 

That once so buoyant mind. 

She cries, 4 These things confound me, 

They settle on my brain, 

The very air around me 
Is universal pain. 

The earth is damp with weeping, 

Rarely the sun shines clear 
On any but those sleeping 
Upon the quiet bier. 

I envy not hard hearts, but yet 
I would I could sometimes forget ; 

I would, though but for moments, look 
With comfort into Nature’s book, 

Nor read that everlasting frown 
Whose terror bows me wildly down.’ ” 

R. M. Milnes. 




180 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


ever effect real, radical, permanent social amelioration, 
who endeavor to cure evils by direct enactment; whose 
feelings are too keen and sensitive to wait the time of the 
Most High, and to contemplate with unflinching faitli and 
patience the sufferings continued through or by reason of 
the remedial process, sometimes even aggravated by it.* 
Hence the coldest tempers are generally, in matters of 
philanthropy, the soundest thinkers and the safest guides 
and administrators. A tender-hearted statesman is almost 
more to be dreaded than a despot or an adventurer. To 
be worthy and efficient coadjutors of God, on the great 
arena of the world, we must be able to borrow some of 
the sublime, impassive calm with which, age after age. 
He has looked down upon the slow progress and the lin¬ 
gering miseries of his children. 


Again. The loftiest culture of the intellect is not 
favorable either to undoubting conviction of any truth 
or to unhesitating devotion to any cause. It has been 
truly said of the most profound and comprehensive order 
of minds : IIs font penser : il ne font pas croire. — “ The 
greater the knowledge the greater the doubt,” said Goethe. 
And the faithfullest thinkers have felt more painfully 
than others that, the deeper they go, often the less easy it 
is to reach soundings; in a word, the more thorough their 
study of the grandest subjects of human interest, the 


* a Such are the men whose best hope for the world 
Is ever that the world is near its end ; 

Impatient of the stars that keep their course, 

And make no pathway for the coming Judge.” 

Spanish Gypsy. 



DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 181 


farther do they get, not to, hut from, certainty: the more 
fully they can see all sides and enter into all considera¬ 
tions, the less able do they feel to pronounce dogmatically 
or to act decidedly. “ The tree of knowledge is not that 
of life ”: profound thought, if thoroughly honest and 
courageous, is deplorably apt to sap the foundation and 
impair the strength of our moral as well as of our intel¬ 
lectual convictions.* It weakens the power of self- 
sacrifice inevitably, by weakening that positive, undoubt¬ 
ing confidence in the correctness of our conclusions and 
the soundness of our cause from which all the great mar¬ 
vels of self-sacrifice have sprung. The age of Martyrdom 
is not the age of Thought.*)* The men who can die for a 
faith are not the same who can investigate it closely, or 
judge it fairly. The discovery of truth belongs to an 
age of inquiry: the promulgation and triumph of a creed 

* It is worthy of remark that Opium, which with some men is 
a wonderful clarifier and intensifier of the intellectual powers, is 
singularly weakening to the moral nature, appears to cloud the 
conscience and benumb the will. 

t “ Look at the history of any great movement for good in the 
world, and ask who took the first critical step in advance. Whom 
it was that the wavering and undecided crowd chose to rally round 
as their leader and their champion. And will not the answer 
always be, as it was in the Apostolic age, — not the man of wide 
and comprehensive thought, nor of deep and fervent love, but the 
characters of simple, unhesitating zeal, which act instead of reflect¬ 
ing, which venture instead of calculating, which cannot or will not 
see the difficulties with which the first struggle of an untried 
reformation are of necessity accompanied.” — Stanley, On the 
Apostolic Age. 




182 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


//belongs to an age of unasking and unreasoning belief. 
We laugh at the scholastic nonsense of Irenseus, and are 
disgusted at the unseemly violence of Tertullian: but 
these men were ready to die for their opinions, and we are 
not. The fact is, it is only minds which see but a little 
way that see clearly and fancy they see all; it is only 
those who see but one side that can feel confident there 
is no other; it is those only whom study has never taught 
how wide is the question which seems to them so narrow 
— how questionable the facts which seem to them so cer¬ 
tain, how feeble the arguments which seem to them so 
impregnable — that can be positive in their beliefs ; it is 
those only whom inquiry has never compelled to abandon 
any of their past opinions who can feel sure enough to 
encounter martyrdom for present ones. Philosophers can 
neither burn nor be burned for a creed: for after all may 
they not be mistaken now as they have often been be¬ 
fore ? It may well be doubted whether some degree of 
fanaticism, that is, wrong appreciation of the essential 
value of things, is not necessary to prompt the higher 
efforts of self-sacrifice; * whether any calm-judging, far- 
seeing, profoundly sagacious man would think any opinion 
certain enough or any cause valuable or spotless enough to 
be worth dying for, except, indeed, the right of free action 
and free thought. If all men had been deep thinkers, — 
had seen everything correctly, valued everything at its 
precise worth, measured the relative importance of each 
object, estimated accurately the degree of certainty attain¬ 
able regarding each opinion or each faith, — could we ever 

* Isaac Taylor, “ Natural History of Enthusiasm.” 



DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 183 


have had those martyrs who have conquered for us our 
present freedom ? and who won it, so to speak, incidentally 
and by a sort of fluke; for they died, not for the right of 
every man to whatever he thought true, but for their right 
to hold and to proclaim their own special form of error. 
Where is the Believer who does not now admit that many 
of these men went to the scaffold for an error, were mar¬ 
tyrs by mistake ? Where is the Philosopher who does not 
suspect that all may have thus nobly blundered ? 


In speaking of the Intellectual faculties it is probable 
that I have anticipated much that might as fittingly have 
been treated under the head of Spiritual faculties; for 
the line of demarcation which separates the two is often 
faint, obscure, and not.easily definable. And here I must 
repeat the remark made at the opening of this chapter, as 
to the inevitable looseness and inaccuracy of our lan¬ 
guage when treading this debatable ground. Whether 
the spiritual faculties be in any true and specific sense 
distinguishable from the intellectual; or whether, as is 
probably the case, the real distinction does not lie between 
the imaginative and the ratiocinative powers of mind, I 
will not discuss. In using the phrase “ Spiritual faculties/' 
we mean those powers or portions of our mind by which 
we contemplate the unseen, the immaterial, the Divine, 
which take cognizance of that wide range of sentiments 
and subjects coming under the vague denomination of 
“ religions” — those faculties, in a word, by virtue of 
which we commune or endeavor to commune with our 




184 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


- - — 1 .... i ■ ■ i . ^' 1 '■ 

.God, and believe in or are conscious of a Soul. Now, these 
faculties are not the most vigorous, piercing, or exalted in 
the strongest frames or the most powerful intellects, — 
but rather the reverse ; and their highest development is 
reached generally in the less sound and well-balanced 
cerebral organizations, and under conditions both of body 
and mind which either are morbid or inevitably tend to 
become so. Of course we meet with many healthy and 
strong men who are pious, and many able men who are 
unfeignedly devout, and many eminently religious men 
whose sanity and vigor both of mind and body are above 
the ordinary standard : we even find exceptional cases 
where the eminently spiritual are eminently intellectual 
also; but as a general rule the observation of mankind 
will, we think, sanction the above broad position. 

The imaginative faculties are those by-which we take 
cognizance of and aspire to things supernal, future, and 
unseen, — “ things spiritual ” in a word. “ Spiritual things 
(says St. Paul) are spiritually discerned.” But the logical 
or reasoning faculties are those by which we obtain posi¬ 
tive and certain knowledge, and correct the errors and 
check the vagaries of the imagination. The two are not 
exactly antagonistic but reciprocally vigilant. We soar 
by the one; we make firm the ground beneath our feet by 
the other. By the one we conceive, form hypotheses, catch 
glimpses ; by the other we judge, compare, and sift. The 
one is the sail; the other is the rudder and the ballast. It 
is natural that the culmination of the two should be mu¬ 
tually excluding and incompatible; and that which is the 
most exercised will infallibly become the strongest. More- 




DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 185 


over, the spiritual or religious imagination is concerned 
with matters of which the simple reason can judge only 
partially and doubtingly, as having defective premises and 
a limited jurisdiction; the provinces of the two faculties 
are in a great measure distinct. The Soul has, or assumes 

• V 

to have, its own senses and perceptions; it sees, feels, is 
conscious of things which the pure intellect can neither 
discern nor pass judgment upon, —which lie out of its 
range. It sometimes conveys to us information which the 
reason can pronounce false, because inconsistent with 
known truths ; but, for the most part, when the Spirit 
says, “ I know, I see,” all that the Intellect can say is, “ It 
may be so: I cannot tell.” 

We have seen that it is the law of our being that the 
exclusive or paramount exercise of any one part of our 
composite nature should be followed by correspondingly 
disproportionate development and predominance of that 
part. Hence we need feel no surprise at observing that 
many of the most magnificent and comprehensive intellects . 
the world has known, even when gifted with fine imagi¬ 
nations, have not been peculiarly or obviously “ spiritually- 
minded,” — rather the contrary. The very acuteness and 
vigor of their reason taught them to distrust what may be 
called the Senses of the Soul, and to avoid cultivating 
what they believed a misleading and a dangerous faculty. 
The converse of this proposition is equally true. Few of 
those in whom the religious element lias been dispropor- 
tionally developed have been men of the soundest or most 
powerful minds. Often they liave been gifted with bril¬ 
liant eloquence and poetic genius of an elevated order: 



ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


186^ 


often have they, in virtue of these gifts, and aided by that 
earnestness of purpose and tenacity of aim which strong 
religious convictions bestow in surpassing measure, been 
able to sway the minds of men and to guide the destinies 
of the world far more powerfully than philosophers or 
sages ; but they have exercised this influence in virtue of 
their moral and not their intellectual qualities. Wisdom 
has a poor chance against the zeal of an unhesitating con¬ 
viction. The weakest of the wise men wdio smiled or 
mourned over the crusading folly of the Middle Ages had 
probably a larger and sounder intellect than Peter the 
Hermit and all his fanatical compeers; yet the latter were 
omnipotent and the former were unheard or trampled 
under foot. 

But further: the paramount cultivation of the spiritual 
powers, the concentration of the mind on religious con¬ 
templation, while we can well believe it may and must 
strengthen that faculty of insight (if indeed the existence 
of such faculty be not altogether a delusion) from which 
all our glimpses of the unseen world, all our loftier and 
deeper spiritual conceptions, are derived, is, as is too sadly 
known, one of the most frequent and certain causes of 
insanity A Not only is it not favorable to health and 

* Many of us are familiar with Sir James Mackintosh’s beautiful 
«/ 

letter to his intimate friend, Robert Hall, perhaps the finest spiritual 
intellect of our generation, on his recovery from an attack of in¬ 
sanity : — 

“ It is certain the child may he too manly, not only for his present 
enjoyments, but for his future prospects. Perhaps, my friend, you 
have fallen into this error of superior natures. From this error has, 




DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 187 


strength of intellect, but it often upsets the intellect alto¬ 
gether. The topics of reflection are so awful and so grand, 
the tension of mind required to grasp them is so great, the 
glimpses gained or fancied are so dazzling, the whole 
atmosphere of thought is so ethereal, that more than ordi¬ 
nary strength of nerve and brain must he needed to ward 
off the natural results. Where the ineffable mysteries of 
the Divine Presence and the Unseen World are truly real¬ 
ized, — where we try to “ live as seeing Him who is in¬ 
visible,” — how can that calmness, which is essential to 
wisdom, that sense of proportion on which sanity depends, 

L 

he maintained ? Our most daring spiritual flights, our 
furthest spiritual glimpses, then, are attained only at an 
awful risk, and by brains on the verge and in immediate 
peril of unsoundness. It may even be that it is a certain 
incipient disorder of mind or tendency to such disorder 
which predisposes men to these dangerously exciting 
topics. 

We shall be reminded, probably, that there was One 
who once walked upon the earth in whom the spiritual 

I think, arisen that calamity with which it has pleased Providence 
to visit you, which I regard in you as little more than the indignant 
struggles of a pure mind with the low realities around it, — the fer¬ 
vent aspirations after regions more congenial to it, — and a momen¬ 
tary blindness produced by the fixed contemplation of objects too 
bright for human vision. I may say in this case, in a far grander 
sense than that in which the words were originally spoken by our 
great Poet: — 

1 And yet the light that led astray 
Was light from heaven. 5 55 

Memoir of Sir James Mackintosh, I. 253. 



188 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


and intellectual elements of character were not only in 
' perfect harmony, but reached the fullest development of 
• . both. To those, however, who believe that Jesus was 
more than Man ; to those, even, who believe that though 
not strictly Divine, he was, for a special purpose, endowed 
with an exceptional organization, we may reply that, on 
tlieir supposition, his case confirms rather than impugns 
our general position. If, for the attainment of this two¬ 
fold perfectness, supernatural endowment were required, 
it follows that ordinary humanity must rest content with 
a more humble or one-sided development. Those, on the 
other hand, who imagine Jesus, though splendidly and 
rarely gifted, to have been perfect only within the attain¬ 
able limits of humanity, — i. e. not to have been Divine, 
but only the possible ideal of the human, — will not feel 
offended by the suggestion, that an unprepossessed observer 
would assign to Christ not a philosophical but a purely 
spiritual pre-eminence; that we should not look upon 
him as the greatest Thinker , even on religious topics, that 
Humanity has given forth, but as the one who most truly 
conceived the Spirit of God, and realized that conformity 
with His will which we are told should be the aim of our 
being here, and which we believe will be the loftiest at¬ 
tainment of our life hereafter. If we are right as to the 
intrinsic distinction and usual discrepancy between intel¬ 
lectual and spiritual supremacy, we see at once the mistake, 
and how deep it lies, of those, on the one hand, who con¬ 
ceive that, because Christ is our perfect pattern and our 
spiritual ideal, he must necessarily be also the depositary 
of all truth and the teacher of perfect wisdom, and of those 



DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 189 


on the other, who finding him intellectually limited and 
in error, conclude thence that he could not be the Divine 
Example which they yet feel instinctively that he was.* 
Further: We find that the spiritual faculties are con¬ 
stantly most predominant and liable to the most extreme 
development in those whose physical organization is the 
least sound and strong, and under those constitutional 
conditions which are unquestionably abnormal and disor¬ 
dered, or bordering on such and tending to become such. 
They are more remarkable in women than in men ; and 
in those men whose nervous system is preternaturally ex¬ 
citable, disproportionably dominant. The close connection 
between hysteria and what we may term “ religiosity ” has 
long been known : so peculiar is the predisposition of hys¬ 
terical patients to see spiritual visions, to fall into religious 

* “ Christ, as the incarnate Logos, was the consummation of moral 
excellence, so far as that is compatible with the unalterable conditions 
of humanity. Learning and science and artistic skill are not em¬ 
braced in the attributes of the Logos. In these respects Christ was 
a man of his own age and nation,— believing and speaking on all 
speculative topics, on every subject that stood outside the conscience 
and its eternal relations with God, like the multitude among whom 
he dwelt. Through this inevitable limitation of his intellectual be¬ 
ing, he acted with more power and effect on the spiritual condition 
of his contemporaries; and from the marked contrast between the 
grandeur and purity of his religion, and the simplicity of his worldly 
wisdom, he has acquired a more than earthly influence over the mind 
of ensuing generations. The unrivalled pre-eminence of his spiritual 
example we cannot now deprive of its claim to a higher reverence, 
by imputing it to extraordinary philosophic culture or the perceptions 
of an intellect raised far above the standard of his time.” — Rev. J. J. 
Tayler’s Sermons, p. 75. 





190 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


trances, to have or to be convinced they have communica¬ 
tions with the unseen world, that some physicians regard 
these things as only phases and symptoms of that many¬ 
faced and many-voiced nervous malady. The trances to 
which St. Paul was subject, and in which he is believed, 
and believed himself, to be favored with spiritual manifes¬ 
tations, appear to have been precisely similar to modern 
instances of religious trance. Works on Medical Psychol¬ 
ogy abound in illustrative cases, in which the exaltation 
and preternatural vividness of some cerebral faculties al¬ 
most resemble the development of a new sense, and have 
by some been regarded as such.* Prolonged sleeplessness 
—j pervigilium , as physicians term it — is well known to 
be a fertile producer of this exaltation of the natural pow¬ 
ers of vision or imagination. The old Sages, who pretend- 
/ 9 ed to develop superhuman capacities in human nature, 
insisted on long abstinence from sleep, as an indispensable 
condition of initiation. The ascetic religionists who dwell 
so strongly on the necessity of fasting for the production 
and cultivation of religious sentiments and emotions well 
know what they are about. Prolonged abstinence from 
food, or a very inadequate amount of it, has a specific 
effect in stimulating, enhancing, purifying, and integrating 
the devotional part of our nature; in goading the brain 
to an unnatural state of susceptibility, as physicians would 
say; in emancipating the spirit from the gross shackles 
of the flesh, as Divines would prefer to express the same 

* See Wigan, Abercrombie, Conolly ; also Bertrand, Vciriete's de 
VExtase. Also various pamphlets, which may be called the litera¬ 
ture of “ the unknown tongues.” 



DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 191 


fact; iii producing that state of mind which it is usual to 
call specifically spiritual. The same condition of pre¬ 
ternatural vividness and lucidity of mental vision frequent¬ 
ly occurs in the crisis of dangerous fevers, and on the 
approach of dissolution. Schiller and Blanco White, a 
few hours before they breathed their last, felt that “ many 
tilings were growing clear to them.” Yet all these states 
are unquestionably morbid, or on the point of becoming so. 

At what price to the soundness of the understanding 
and the health of the natural affections this special and 
abnormal development of the spiritual faculties is -pur¬ 
chased, let the history of creeds, the biographies of saintly „ 
men, and the life and writings of the religious world of 
our own day, bear sad and humiliating testimony. What 
inconceivably monstrous and self-contradictory tenets have 
been accepted at the command of spiritual visions ! What 
delusive information have not the excited “ senses of the 
Soul ” imposed on the bewildered reason ! What irrational 
conceptions have not the keenest understandings often 
been compelled to entertain ! How many deplorable ex¬ 
amples have we had of men of the finest intellect compel¬ 
ling that intellect to “ eat dirt,” when the religious element 
in their composite nature had fairly got the upper hand 
and established itself in the supremacy of an irresponsible 
Autocrat! How fearfully omnipotent is excessive relig¬ 
iosity of temperament in blinding the understanding to 
the simplest conclusions, in screening from detection the 
most untenable delusions, in masking the most flagrant in¬ 
consistencies, in preventing us from recognizing the plain¬ 
est truths or the most obvious errors, though both were 



192 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


written in sunbeams, — may be learnt from almost every 
article of our popular theology. To such an extent lias 
this gone that the antagonism of Faith and Reason lias 
been erected into an axiom, and the subordination of the 
Understanding to the Imagination — of the Intellectual 
to the Spiritual faculties — has been preached by the pious 
as the first of duties. 

The sad havoc which the excessive development of the 
religious temperament makes in the natural affections, 
where the intellect has not been proportionally cultivated, 
or has not been enthroned in its due supremacy, is a more 
lamentable phenomenon still. Truly it has “ separated 
chief friends,” perverted healthy sympathies, “ turned 
wholesome hearts into gall,” dried up and trampled out 
all the sweet humanities of life. Under its influence 
wives have become cold to their husbands, and mothers 
cruel to their children; the purest earthly love has been 
withered by the unnatural competition of the self-called 
divine; crime it has gilded with the hues of virtue, and 
the most ferocious barbarism it lias fancied was both 
clemency and duty. It has led those under its despotic 
sway to look upon all the gentler emotions, the tenderer 
affections, the more vivid sympathies, with which God 
has hallowed and beautified our earthly life, as snares, 
weaknesses, and sins, — and the trampling of them out as 
the most acceptable service that could be rendered to a 
jealous and engrossing Deity. It has poisoned the very 
source of all that is lovely and endearing in our com¬ 
posite being. It is to no purpose to say that these effects 
are produced only in weak and disordered minds : they 



DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 


193 


are produced in minds disordered and weakened by the 
very process of spiritual aspiration; they are produced, 
even in great minds, whenever the religious element 
acquires complete predominance over the intellectual. 
Of course, if the natural affections assert their rights, and 
the intellect maintains its due supremacy, the effects we 
have spoken of do not ensue ; hut neither, then, does the 
spiritual faculty reach its culminating point. 


If the position we have endeavored to establish in the 
foregoing pages be sound; if, of the three components of 
which man’s complicated nature consists, no one can 
reach the highest culture and development of which any 
one is susceptible, except by unfairness, injury, or peril to 
the others; and if those faculties especially which we de¬ 
nominate “ spiritual,” and have been taught to regard as 
our noblest, can only attain supremacy under bodily 
conditions which imply or threaten disease, — then it 
would seem to follow : — 

That the ideal of humanity on earth — the perfection 
which we are intended to attain here — is to be sought, 
not in the surpassing development of our highest faculties, 
but in the harmonious and equal development of all. In 
proportion as a man’s physical organization is neglected, 
maltreated, or impoverished in the exclusive or pre¬ 
dominant culture of his understanding or his imagina¬ 
tion, — or in proportion as the religious and devotional 
element within him is stimulated and cultivated at the 
expense of the Intellect, — in that proportion does he de- 

9 


M 





194 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


part from his proper standard and thwart and traverse 
his allotted destiny. 

That the existence of faculties capable — as we know 
by actual proof — of a degree of elevation and perfection 
which is only attainable on earth in abnormal and dis¬ 
ordered conditions points towards a future state and a 
different organization; to conditions, in a word, under 
which the perfection, possible and therefore designed, of 
those faculties can be achieved. They can scarcely, we 
may assume, be meant to remain forever in an imper¬ 
fectly developed state; yet that state is the one clearly 
assigned to them on earth. With a more finished and 
ethereal frame, the Intellect will be able to strive and 
soar without crushing the body, or starving the affections, 
or discouraging the Soul; and the Soul may reach 
heights unattainable below, and gaze undazzled on splen¬ 
dors that here only blind and bewilder its unprepared 
and unfitted vision. 

That the design of the Creator, and therefore the duty 
of man, upon earth, is not the highest development of the 
Individual , but the perfection of the Race. The former, 
as we have seen, must inevitably be reserved for other 
conditions or another state : the latter is attainable in 
this. Nature has placed, if not impassable barriers in 
our upward path, at least warning beacons against the 
attempt to overleap them. She has not only cautioned 
us against the extreme cultivation of the intellectual and 
spiritual man, but has condemned that cultivation by 
assigning disease as its inevitable consequence and 
condition. In forbidding us to surpass the limits of the 




DIRECTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. 195 


thoroughly but harmoniously developed specimens of 
Humanity, she has assigned to us the welcome and 
feasible task of bringing up the whole human Race to 
those limits: not to make strong and healthy frames 
into Herculeses and Athletes, not to make wise men into 
Platos, Bacons, or Goethes, not to make saintly men into 
Wesleys, Xaviers, and St. Bernards, but to make all men 
vigorous and sane, wise, good, and holy, in the measure of 
their just and well-balanced capacity ; not to urge the- 
exceptional few to still more exceptional attainments, 
but to bring the many to the level of the few. Two 
glorious futures lie before us: the progress of the Race 
here, the progress of the Man hereafter. History indi¬ 
cates that the individual man needs to be transplanted 
in order to excel the Past. He appears to have reached 
his perfection centuries ago. Men lived then whom we 
have never yet been able to surpass, rarely even to equal. 
Our knowledge has of course gone on increasing, for that 
is a material capable of indefinite accumulation. But for 
power, for the highest reach and range of mental and 
spiritual capacity in every line, the lapse of two or three 
thousand years has shown no sign of increase or improve¬ 
ment. What Sculptor has surpassed Phidias ? What 
Poet has transcended TEschylus, Homer, or the author of 
the Book of Job ? What devout Aspirant has soared 
higher than David or Isaiah ? What Statesman have 
modern times produced mightier or grander than Peri¬ 
cles ? What Patriot Martyr truer or nobler than Soc¬ 
rates ? Wherein, save in mere acquirements, was Bacon 
superior to Plato ? or Xewton to Thales or Pythagoras ? 





196 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


Very early in our history individual men beat their wings 
against the allotted boundaries of their earthly domin¬ 
ions ; early in History God gave to the Human Eace the 
types and patterns to imitate and approach, but never to 
transcend. Here, then, surely we see clearly intimated 
to us our appointed work; viz., to raise the masses to 
the true standard of harmonious human virtue and 
capacity, not to strive ourselves to overleap that stand¬ 
ard ; not to put our own souls or brains into a hot-bed, 
but to put all our fellow-men into a fertile and a whole¬ 
some soil. If this be so, both our practical course and 
our speculative difficulties are greatly cleared. The timid 
fugitives from the duties and temptations of the world, 
the selfish coddlers and nursers of their own souls, the sed¬ 
ulous cultivators either of a cold intellect or of a fervent 
Spiritualism, have alike mistaken their mission, and 
turned their back upon their goal. The Philanthropists, 
in the measure of their wisdom and their purity of zeal, 
are the real fellow-workmen of the Most High. This 
principle may give us the clew to many dispensations 
which at first seem dark and grievous, to the grand scale 
and the distracting slowness of Nature’s operations; to 
her merciless inconsideration for the individual where 
the interests of the Eace are in question.* Noble souls 
are sacrificed to ignoble masses; the good champion often 
falls, the wrong competitor often wins: but the Great 
Car of Humanity moves forward by those very steps 
which revolt our sympathies and crush our hopes, and 
which, if we could, we would have ordered otherwise. 

* “ So careful of the type she seems, 

So careless of the single life.” — In Mcmoriam. 



V. 

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE. 





THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE. 


OME men seem to be sent into the world for pur- 



poses of action only. Their faculties are all strung 
up to toil and enterprise ; their spirit and their frame are 
alike redolent of energy. They pause and slumber like 
other men, but it is only to recruit from actual fatigue; 
they occasionally want quiet, but only as a refreshment 
to prepare them for renewed exertion, not as a normal 
condition to be wished for or enjoyed for itself. They 
need rest, not repose. They investigate and reflect, but 
only to estimate the best means of attaining their ends, 
or to measure the value of their undertaking against its 
cost: they think, they never meditate. Their mission, 
their enjoyment, the object and condition of their exist¬ 
ence is WORK : they could not exist here without it; they 
cannot conceive another life as desirable without it. 
Their amount of vitality is beyond that of ordinary men; 
they are never to be seen doing nothing; when doing 
nothing else they are always sleeping. Happy Souls ! 
Happy men, at least! 

There are others who skim over the surface of life, 
reflecting just as little as these and not reposing much 



200 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


oftener; wliose sensibilities are quick, whose tempera¬ 
ments are cheerful, whose frames are naturally active but 
not laborious; on whom nature and the external world 
play as on a stringed instrument, sometimes drawing out 
sweet sounds, sometimes discordant ones-; but whom the 
inner world seldom troubles with any intimation ol its 
existence; men whom the interests of the day suffice to 
occupy; the depths of whose souls are never irradiated by 
gleams or stirred by breezes “ from a remoter life.” They 
too are to be envied. The bees and the butterflies are 
alike happy.* 

There are other spirits whom God has cast in a differ¬ 
ent mould, or framed of less harmonious substance ; men 
gifted with that contemplative faculty which is a blessing 
or a curse according as it is linked with a cheerful or a 
melancholy temperament; according as it is content to 
busy itself only with derivative and secondary matters, 
or dives down to the hidden foundation of things; accord¬ 
ing as it assumes and accepts much, or is driven by its 
own necessity to question everything; according as it can 
wander happily and curiously among the flowers and fruit 
of the Tree of Life, or as it is dangerously impelled to 
dig about its roots and analyze the soil in which it grows. 
To such men existence is one long note of interrogation, 

* “ Happy the many to whom Life displays 
Only the flaunting of its Tulip-flower ; 

Whose minds have never Lent to scrutinize 
Into the maddening riddle of the Root, — 

Shell within shell, dream folded over dream.” 

R. M. Milnes. 




THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE. 


:g i 


and the universe a storehouse of problems all clamorous 
for solution. The old fable of the Sphinx is true for 
them: life is the riddle they have to read, and death, 
sadness, or the waste of years, is the penalty if they fail 
to interpret it aright. A few, perhaps, may find the key, 
and reach “the peace that passeth understanding.” A 
larger number fancy they have found it, and are serene in 
their fortunate delusion. Others retire from the effort, 
conscious that they have been bathed in the search, but, 
partly in weariness, partly in trust, partly in content, 
acquiescing in their failure. Others, again, and these too 
often the nobler and the grander souls, reach the verge of 
their pilgrimage still battling with the dark enigma, and 
dying less of age or malady than of the profound de¬ 
pression that must be the lot of all who have wasted life 
in fruitless efforts to discover how it should be spent and 
how regarded; and which even a sincere belief in the 
hood of life which lies behind the great black curtain of 
Death, cannot quite avail to dissipate.* 

But, whatever may be the form or issue of the search, 
no man gifted with the sad endowment of a contemplative 

* “ And though we wear out life, alas ! 

Distracted as a homeless wind, 

In beating where we may not pass, 

In seeking what we shall not find ; 

“Yet shall we one day gain, life past, 

Clear vision o’er our Being’s whole, — 

Shall see ourselves, and learn at last 
Our true affinities of Soul ! ” 


9 * 


M. Arnold. 




202 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


and questioning turn of mind, can reach mature life with¬ 
out earnest meditation on the great problem of himself 
and of the world, the inner and the outer universe; with¬ 
out seeking whence he came and whither he is hound, — 

“ The Hills where his life rose 
And the Sea to which it goes.” 

He yearns to know the meaning of existence, its aim and 
purport; in what light he is to look upon it, in what way 
he is to use it. The necessities of his nature forbid him 
to lead a provisional life, either mentally or morally ; he 
wants to sail, he cannot be content to drift; he must 
know his haven and steer his course. Sentient and con¬ 
scious existence to him is a problem to be solved, not a 
summer day to be enjoyed; at least he must ascertain 
whether it is this last, before he can tranquilly accept 
even its joys. He is, and must ever be 

“ A Being holding large discourse, — 

Looking before and after.” 


What then is Human Life, its significance, its aim. its 
mission, its goal ? 

To the opening mind — at least when so placed as to 

'~ v - / _ 

be exempt from the sordid cares and necessities of a mere 

material existence — it seems like a delicious feast: the 

most magnificent banquet ever spread by a kind Creator 

* 

for a favored creature, the amplest conceivable provision 
for a Being of the most capacious and various desires. 
The surface of the earth is strewed with flowers: the 




THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE. 


203 


path of years is paved and planted with enjoyments. 
Every sort of beauty has been lavished on our allotted 
home, beauties to enrapture every sense, beauties to satisfy 
every taste. Forms the noblest and the loveliest, colors 
the most gorgeous and the most delicate, odors the sweet¬ 
est and the subtlest, harmonies the most soothing and the 
most stirring; the sunny glories of the day, the pale, 
Elysian grace of moonlight, the lake, the mountain, the 
primeval forest, and the boundless ocean; “ silent pinna¬ 
cles of aged snow” in one hemisphere, the marvels of 
tropical luxuriance in another; the serenity of sunsets; 

• 

the sublimity of storms ; everything is bestowed in bound¬ 
less profusion on the scene of our existence : we can con¬ 
ceive or desire nothing more exquisite or perfect than 
what is round us every hour. And our perceptions are 
so framed as to be consciously alive to all. The pro¬ 
vision made for our sensuous enjoyment is in overflowing 
abundance: so is that for the other elements of our com¬ 
plex nature. Who that has revelled in the opening 
ecstasies of a young imagination or the rich marvels of 
the world of Thought does not confess that the Intelli¬ 
gence has been dowered at least with as profuse a benefi¬ 
cence as the Senses! Who that has truly tasted and 
fathomed human love in its dawning and its crowning 
joys has not thanked God for a felicity which indeed 
“ passeth understanding ” ! If we had set our fancy to 
picture a Creator occupied solely in devising delight for 
children whom he loved, we could not conceive one single 
element of- bliss which is not here. We might retrench 
casualties; we might superadd duration and extension; 




204 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


we might make that which is partial, occasional, and 
transient, universal and enduring; but we need not, and 
we could not, introduce one new ingredient of joy. 

So varied and so lavish is the provision made for the 
happiness of man upon this earth, that we feel, intuitively 
and irresistibly, that Earth was designed to be a scene of 
enjoyment to him; that it was created and arranged 
expressly for this end ; nor can either sophistry or sad 
experience, in any sound and really sincere mind, impair 
this conviction. We feel at once that there is something 
crumbling in the premises and rotten in the logic that 
can ever attempt to persuade us of the contrary. It is 
true that we see around us much suffering; that the mass 
of men are happy only partially, fitfully, imperfec ly; 
that no man is as happy as the provision made for him • 
•indicates that he ought to be. But this neither does 
shake our conviction, nor should it. For the more we 
study Nature, the more do we attain the certainty that 
nearly all this positive suffering and scanty joy is trace¬ 
able to our neglect or transgression of her laws, not to 
the inadequate provision made for human happiness, but 
to our unskilful use of that provision ; that the misery 
now prevalent is not a consequence of Nature’s original 
or ultimate design, but a contravention or postponement 
of that design. 

This is truth, but not the whole truth, nor the only 
truth. Life was spread as a banquet for pure, noble, un¬ 
perverted natures, and may be such to them, ought to be 
such to them, is often such now, will be such always and 
to all in future and better ages. But, as at the Egyptian 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE. 


205 


festivals, so at the great festival of existence, a veiled 
spectre ever sits to remind us that all is not said, that 
the word of the enigma is not yet deciphered. Even when 
centuries of progress shall have realized the Earth’s ideal, 
Life can never be solely or completely a Drama of holy 
and serene delights, so long as Death stands forever by to 
close it with a Tragedy. 

And this will always be so. Prudence and temperance k 
may lengthen life; Science may reduce casualties and 
mitigate disease ; fewer may be cut off in infancy ; more 
may reach the possible limit of earthly duration ; a larger 
and larger number in each successive age may be allowed 
to play out the whole piece : but when all is done, life, 
longer or shorter, comes to the same end; if those we love 
• do not go from us early, if the things we are concerned in 
interest us to the last, still the day comes — and is always 
in prospect — when we are called upon to leave all that 
has gladdened the eye, enchanted the ear, stirred the in¬ 
tellect, soothed and satisfied the heart, — to abandon the 
onlv scene we *have ever gazed at, to close the only book 
we have ever read in, to exchange the known for the un¬ 
known,— to go out , — to cease, or appear to cease, to be. 

v -V 

Death is even more than this, though we are accustomed 
to disguise it to ourselves with gentle words and beautiful 
fancies and glorious anticipations. We may speak of it 
as an exchange of one sort of an existence for another, — 
of a disappointing reality for a perfected ideal; as “ walk¬ 
ing into a great darkness ” ; as “ long disquiet merged in 
rest ” ; as entering upon untrodden and inviting worlds; 
as launching forth upon waters of which the darkest feaL 


* 




206 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


ure is that we cannot see, but must be content to believe 
in, the farther shore. 

“ Or we can sit 

In serious calm beneath deciduous trees, 

And count the leaves, scarce heavier than the air, 

Which leave the branch and tremble to the ground ; 

Or, out at midnight in a gliding boat, 

Enjoy the waning moon, and moralize, 

And say that Death is but a Mediator 
Between the lower and the loftier life.” 

But these are all figures of speech. They may express a 
truth : we strongly believe they do. But they do not ex¬ 
press the simple fact of Death as it strikes our unsophisti¬ 
cated sense; as our natures regard it before religion or 
philosophy has imposed, or endeavored to impose, silence 
on the instincts of the heart. To these native instincts 
Death is the great “ sleep which rounds our little life,” 
it is a wrench from all that has made up our being for 
long years of thought, sense, and feeling; it is a loss of 
the only existence we can truly realize; not journeying 
into a new country, but obviously, ostensibly, so far as all 
appearances go, an end of the journey we have travelled 
for so long. We need not deceive ourselves. Death, even 
to the most fervent believers in the Great Hope, can never 
be other than a Mystery: to others it must remain God’s 
saddest, deepest, most disturbing mystery. 

It must be so to all. The gayest and most joyous spirit 
that ever sported from the cradle to the grave has this 
tragic element as inextricably interwoven with its life as 
any of us. The refined, the loving, the tender, and the 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE. 


207 


noble, — whose existence has been one beautiful and har¬ 
monious poem, — the music of whose nature has never 
jarred, — who have extracted from their career on earth 
every pure delight, every permitted ecstasy of the senses 
and the soul which the Creator fitted it to render, — find 
the same inexorable Darkness awaiting them at the end 
of their pilgrimage, if not breaking it off abruptly in its 
brightest and most perfect hour. The mightiest Intelli¬ 
gences, who have put life to heroic uses, who have waged 
noble warfare and toiled for noble ends, who have “ rowed 
hard against the stream,” who have enrolled themselves 
in the glorious army of God’s warriors and workmen, — 
these, too, know that they may every hour expect the fall¬ 
ing of the curtain; and that, fall when it may, it is sure 
to find them with their work unfinished and their goal 
unreached. Those who most enjoy life, and those who 
best employ it, must dose it amid the same impenetrable 
shadows. 

And this solemn fact is not merely a distant certainty, 
to which we may shut our eyes till the time comes : it is 
everywhere before us; it forces itself on our attention, 
forbids us to forget it. It does not merely await us at the 
close of our journey; it crosses us at every step, its alarum 
startles us every hour ; it insists on being a constant guest, 
at our homes, or in our thoughts. We must reckon with 
it; we cannot put it by ; it gives us no peace till we turn 
manfully to face it, to wrestle with it, to understand it, to 
settle with ourselves how we intend to regard it during 
life and to meet it when it comes. It continues the most 
waylaying thought of the thoughtful man, till he silences 



208 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


its importunity by listening to all it lias to say, and reason¬ 
ing it back into the tomb, 

♦ 

“ Or place it in some chamber of the soul, 

Where it may lie unseen as sound, yet felt, — 

Making life hushed and awful.” 


Again, Life is a scene of much suffering and sorrow. It 
is true, as I have argued, that a vast amount, probably far 
the greatest amount, of this is gratuitous and avoidable. 
Much of it arises from ignorance of the laws of nature, 
which the growing wisdom of centuries will dissipate. 
Much of it arises from a violation of physiological and 
moral obligations, which, in the course of ages, the human 
race will learn almost universally to obey. Much of it 
arises from social errors which we have already begun to 
recognize as errors; much from a discrepancy between our 
theory and our practice which we are even now awakening 
to the necessity of removing. A vast proportion of the 
evils which we see around us we know to be curable, 
and we think we see the mode and the epoch of their 
cure. The more sanguine among us are already dream¬ 
ing of the day when the actual of Humanity shall ap¬ 
proach within sight of its ideal, and when the original pro¬ 
gramme of the Creator shall at all events be approximately 
realized. 

But when all this has been done,— to say nothing of 
the long ages of the Meanwhile,— when the perfection 
of a nature inherently imperfect shall have been reached, 
— there will still remain a large residuum of grief and 




THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE. 


209 


pain incapable of avoidance or elimination, and which 
we must therefore accept as one of the permanent elements 
of the problem presented to us for solution. Life, as 
constituted by God, not as spoiled by man, is not only a 
scene of designed enjoyment, terminated by a strange, 
mysterious, and almost contradictory crisis: it is a scene 
also of inalienable suffering, — a scene whose habitual 
harmonies are jarred upon by discordant sounds, whose 
bright skies must at times be overcast by clouds of por¬ 
tentous darkness, whose hymns of praise and pseans of 
rejoicing will often be exchanged for the sharp cry of 
pain and the wail of inextinguishable grief. Perfect our 
nature and our social systems as we may, there will still 
be casualties to stretch us on a bed of anguish to which 
no skill can bring effective or permanent relief; there will 
still be chambers of long and wearing sickness where 
the assiduities of the tenderest friends cannot hinder the 
sufferer from longing for the visit of the last, mightiest, 
kindest friend of all. There will still be bereavements 
of the affections, not always created by the grave; sever¬ 
ances of Soul, for which there is neither balm nor lethe ; 
vacant places by the hearthstone which no form again 
may fill: and as long as generation succeeds generation 
and families are linked together; as long as the young 
are coming on the stage while the old are leaving it; as 
long as Nature commands us to cling so passionately to 
what we yet must lose so certainly and may lose so sud¬ 
denly and so soon; as long as Love continues the most 
imperious passion, and Death the surest fact, of our min¬ 
gled and marvellous humanity, so long will the sweetest 


* 


N 



210 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


and truest music upon earth be always in the minor 
key.* 

And in “ the long meanwhile ” — during which the 
goal of human attainment is scarcely perceptibly ap¬ 
proached — the world does seem such a stumbling botch 
and muddle; Man himself is such a “ piebald miscel¬ 
lany ” with his 

“ Bursts of great heart, and slips in sensual mire ” ; 

the discrepancy is so vast between our highest actual and 
our most moderate ideal; the follies of men are so utterly 
astounding, to one who has seen them close; their weak¬ 
nesses so profoundly despicable; their vices so unspeak¬ 
ably revolting; their virtues, even, so casual, halting, and 
hollow; Life is such “ a comedy to those that think, such 
a tragedy to those that feel ”; its pages are so sadly, 
incomprehensibly grotescpie ! Generation after generation 
of the young rush sanguinely into the arena, confident 
that they can solve the puzzle, confident that they can 
win the victory. Generation after generation of the old 
step down into the grave baffled and bewildered, vexed at 
the dreary retrospect, mortified at the memory of long 
years eagerly w T asted in following “ light that led astray,” 
mourning over brilliant banners torn and soiled, over 
heights still unsealed, over fields and trenches filled with 

* “We look before and after, 

And pine for what is not, 

E’en our sincerest laughter 
With some pain is fraught ; 

Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought.” 

Shelley. 




THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE. 


211 


the martyrs of Humanity. The drama can be only half 
discerned, or half played out; or it may be that we have 
not yet got the clew to the meaning of the Most High. 

Yet, perhaps, if we consider patiently enough, some 
conclusions may be reached, some light may be seen to 
move over the dark and restless waters, imperfect and 
^fragmentary indeed, yet not altogether inadequate, — not 
enough for a philosophic scheme, nor yet for a dogmatic 
creed, but enough for a trusting faith, enough to guide 
and quiet us in life, enough to enable us to bear to die. 


That life was given us to be enjoyed, few men in their 
sober senses, not distracted by unendurable anguish or 
rendered morbid by a perverse theology, have ever 

-v- A. /v 

seriously dreamed of doubting. The analogy of the 
lower animals confirms the common consciousness. Hu¬ 
man infancy holds the same language. The brutes that 
perish, but never speculate, and the young whose native 
instincts are not yet marred by thought, alike listen to 
nature and alike are joyous. The earth is sown with 
pleasures, as the Heavens are studded with stars,— 
wherever the conditions of existence are unsophisticated. 
Scarcely a scene that is not redolent of beauty ; scarcely 
a flower that does not breathe sweetness. Not one of 
our senses that, in its healthy state, is not an avenue to 
enjoyment. Not one of our faculties that it is not a 
delight to exercise. Provision is made for the happiness 
of every disposition and of every taste, — the active, the 
contemplative, the sensuous, the ethereal. Provision is 




212 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


made for the happiness of every age,— for dancing infancy, 
for glowing youth, for toiling manhood, for reposing age. 
So clear does this seem to our apprehension, that we do 
not hesitate to pronounce that a man who has not been 
happy in life has missed one of the aims of his existence; 
lie has failed of fulfilling the Creator’s purpose; his career 
has been a carriere manquee. Exceptional cases there may 
be, as there are anomalous organizations: these are among 
the “ insoluble problems ” of philosophy. But if a man 
with the material of enjoyment around him and virtuously 
within his reach walks God’s earth wilfully and obsti¬ 
nately with a gloomy spirit and an ascetic temper, closing, 
his eye to beauty, shutting up his heart to joy, paying 
his orisons in groans, and making misery his worship, we 
feel assured that he is contravening his Maker’s design 
in endowing him with life; he is perverting His gifts ; he 
is just as truly running counter to God’s will by being 
intentionally wretched as by intentionally doing wrong. 

Of course, as we all know, there are circumstances that 
peremptorily forbid happiness, circumstances when it can 
only be purchased by such a dereliction of duty as robs it 
of all its innocence and nearly all its zest, circumstances 
under which we are calleci “ to endure hardness, as good 
soldiers of Jesus Christ.” These cases, wherein happiness 
would be sinful, are just as much, but no more, the ordain- 
ments of Providence as those more common ones wherein 
' happiness is natural and right. What we mean to assert 
as a truth which writes itself in sunbeams on the Soul, is, 
that God has given us the joys of earth to be relished, not 
to be neglected, or depreciated, or forbidden ; to be grate- 




T1IE SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE. 


213 


fully accepted as bounties, not to be avoided as snares 
and perils; that He lias scattered them in our path, to 
gladden and to smooth, not to tantalize or tempt; that 
He has graciously called us to the rich banquet of life, not 
that we may shrink from this wholesome viand lest 
poison may lurk beneath its surface, nor look coldly and 
repellently on that delicious fruit as if its beauty were 
deceptive and unreal, nor refuse that splendid flower, 
because its colors must fade, and because thorns may be 
mingled with its leaves, nor comport ourselves either as 
if we were superior to the weakness of enjoyment, or as 
if we waited for a nobler feast: but that we should par¬ 
take of all that He has given with the relish of an 
unspoiled nature, the moderation of a wise spirit, and 
the emotion of a thankful heart. 

Divines, in that surplice of conventional phraseology 
which they wear once a week, tell us that Christianity 
teaches us to look upon the joys of earth as hollow, worth¬ 
less, transitory, "not to be compared to the glory that 
shall be revealed,” snares to the weak soul, stumbling- 
blocks to the feeble knees, things to be scorned by those 
who have in prospect the splendors of a higher world. 
"We have not so learned Christ.” That the joys of 
earthly life are poor and worthless is an idle lie. That 
these joys are pale, partial, and passing, when compared 
with the ineffable beatitudes of that world " which the 
glory of God doth enlighten,” in a degree which language 
cannot measure, we need no words to tell us. But what 
of that ? The bliss of Heaven is yonder, is future, is 
unseen ; the bliss of earth is here, is present, is felt. God 






214 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


lias given ns the one, noiv: lie lias not given us the other 
yet. He is not so poor in felicities or so niggard in his 
bounty that he has not wherewithal to furnish forth two 
worlds. He does not give us our choice of the two: he 
gives us, conditionally, both. If Nature is indeed His 
book, and if we are competent to decipher even the sim¬ 
plest words of His handwriting, He has meant us to be 
happy here and hereafter, perfectly happy hereafter, par¬ 
tially happy here. And virtue, not misery, is the appointed 
road to heaven. We are to earn the joys of a higher 
existence, not by scorning, but by using, all the gifts of 
God in this. 

It is high*time that on this subject we should in some 
way establish a conformity between our professions and 
our practice ; that we should no longer say one thing and 
do another; that integrity and self-government should not 
both be broken down, as they now are, by the established 
conventionalism of raising a standard that cannot be fol¬ 
lowed, and pursuing, under protest, a conduct too natural 
to be rationally abandoned, but on which a formal con¬ 
demnation is periodically uttered, and for which an act 
of Indemnity as it were has to be periodically passed. 
The mischief done to the ingenuous mind in its aspira¬ 
tions after truth and virtue by this flagrant discrepancy 
between what is affirmed to be right and what it feels to 
be inevitable, passes calculation. The moment we clearly 
recognize that the morality which we hear preached is a 
code to be listened to, not practised, that moment the 
premier qms qui coute has been taken, and the broad way 
that leadeth to destruction has been thrown open before 




THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE. 


215 


us. It is absolutely essential, then, that our preaching 
should be brought into harmony with, not our habitual 
practice, not the low-pitched level of a virtue which or¬ 
dinary men find easy, but the fair possibilities of human 
goodness and the wholesome instincts of a nature fresh 
from the hand of the Creator. It cannot be right to 
preach anything which is not true; it cannot be right to 
exhort to anything which is not natural, which is not 
possible, and which would not be desirable if it were. 
It is not right therefore to represent this earth as a vale 
of tears, this life as a weary pilgrimage, the profuse and 
marvellous beauties that surround us as the concealing 
flowers scattered over pitfalls, the innocent joys of exist¬ 
ence as trials sent to test our virtue in rejecting them, 
the pure and fond affections of the heart as snares against 
which we should be on our guard, or as weaknesses to 
which the Christian ought to rise superior. It is not 
right to exhort us to “ Love not the world, neither the 
things of the world,” in the bald and naked parlance of 
ordinary preachers. It cannot be right to preach, “ Take 
no thought for the morrow, what ye shall eat or what ye 
shall drink, or wherewithal shall ye be clothed,” for a man 
who should practise this would be held guilty of some¬ 
thing worse than folly. It is time that those who assume 
the position of beacon lights and guides should take 
serious counsel with themselves, and ascertain what they 
really think, and say nothing but what they actually 
mean. 

How, of three things we are all in our hearts convinced. 
We know that many of the best men have been also the 



216 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


happiest. We have all known some men, and possibly 
more women, on whom the sunshine of God’s smile most 
obviously rested, — 

“ Glad hearts, without reproach or blot, 

Who do Thy will and know it not, ” — 

whose hearts w T ere filled with every human affection, fond, 
clinging, passionate, tender; who§e healthy and happy 
organization tasted with intensest relish every innocent 
pleasure of a beckoning world; whose fresh pure spirits 
were a perpetual fountain of delight; on whose soul all 
sw T eet breezes of life and nature played as on a well-timed 
harp, and brought forth sounds of richest melody which 
of themselves were a hymn of praise; who loved God 
the more for loving the world which He had made so 
much ; on whom it was impossible not to believe that 
His eye rested with far other satisfaction and approval 
than on the sour ascetic or the rigid Pharisee. 

Again: the desire of earthly happiness is implanted 
deep in every human heart. It is instinctive, universal, 
ineradicable. It is not the highest spring of human effort, 
but it is the most widely felt and the most intensely active, 
and will remain such till, in the course of upward pro¬ 
gress and purification, the love of duty takes its place. It 
preserves him from apathy; it prohibits despair; it stimu¬ 
lates to ceaseless exertion. It is impossible to believe that 
God would have endowed us with this eager yearning after 
what He never designed us to attain ; that we should have 
been thus ordered to strive for an object which yet it is 
sinful to seek thus earnestly or to relish thus intensely. 




THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE. 


217 


The object lor which we are gifted with such an inextin¬ 
guishable longing cannot be all dust and ashes, nor can it 
be meant that it should turn to such between our lips. 
God is not the author of a lie. If earthly happiness be 
not designed to be sought, attained, and enjoyed by men, 
then the teaching of Nature is deceptive and we turn over 
the leaves of her book in vain. 

And, thirdly, no one doubts or affects to doubt that we 
are commanded both by instinct and the moral sense to 
seek and promote the happiness of others. To relieve suf¬ 
fering, to soothe distress, to confer pleasure, to dry the 
tears of the afflicted, to spread comfort and joy around us, 
is, we are taught, the noblest function in which man can 
spend his brightest years and his freshest strength. Are 
not those whose lives and powers are devoted to the task 
of spreading happiness around them felt to be, in an 
especial manner, “ fellow-laborers with God,” carrying 
out His purposes, doing His work ? Are not those who 
“ go about doing good ” recognized at once as the peculiar 
disciples of His exactest image upon earth ? Do we 
not measure the degree in which men have deserved the 
gratitude of their species by the degree in which they 
have contributed to assuage trouble and diffuse peace ? 
And what a hollow and miserable mockerv is it then to 
say that this life was not meant for enjoyment, when 
to multiply the sum of human enjoyment is felt and 
proclaimed to be the most virtuous, sacred, obligatory, 
godlike work in which Life can be spent! 

Nor is there anything in the example of Christ, con¬ 
sidered with its context, which in the least militates 


10 




218 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


against this view. Observe, we know only one year or 
three years of Christ’s life. Of the thirty years that pre¬ 
ceded his public appearance we know absolutely nothing. 
Of the brief period of his public career, we know only a 
few fragmentary facts, selected as illustrating one phase 

of his character. We have no reason whatever for sup- 

*• 

posing that he did not enjoy life during youth and early 
manhood. We have no reason whatever for assuming 
that, before the stern solemnity of his mission threw all 
softer and gentler emotions into the shade and gradually 
engrossed his whole Being, he had not relished, with all 
the intensity of a healthy nature and a sensitive organiza¬ 
tion, every innocent pleasure and every holy and serene 
delight. We have indications, that, even when li^s soul 
was absorbed in the terrible grandeur and the toilsome 
difficulties of the “ work which had been given him to do,” 
he was still keenly alive to the exquisite beauties of that 
world he was to quit so soon, and to the enjoyment of that 
domestic peace to which he could dedicate only moments 
so brief and rare. But even were it not so ; even if we 
had reason to suppose that Jesus of Nazareth, consecrated 
from his youth to a task that demanded the most unlimit¬ 
ed self-sacrifice and the intensest concentration of every 
faculty and feeling, had no sensibility to spare for the 
beauty or the bliss of earth; that 

“ He looked on all the joys of Time 
With undesiring eyes,” — 

the fact would have no practical antagonism to our position. 
Prom time to time God raises up individuals, cast in a 




THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE. 


219 


special mould, and set apart for a special destiny, vowed to 
a special work; men whose entire power, thought, sensibil¬ 
ities, seem to lie in the channel of their appointed calling, 
whose mission is their Joy,* the fiery energy of whose pur¬ 
pose burns up every other longing, the magnitude of whose 
glorious aim dwarfs and smothers every other object. Of 
such Christ was the first and noblest: but such are no 
gauges or examples for ordinary men, in ordinary times, 
with ordinary powers; save in this, that moments and 
circumstances come to most of us some time in our lives, 
which, if we are truly noble, we shall seize with gladness, 
when we, like they, are called upon to forego the lower for 
the higher office ; to remember that though life was given 
us for enjoyment, it was given us for something nobler 
also ; and that the very happiness of which it was designed 
to be the instrument and the stage can only be conclusive¬ 
ly promoted by the willing immolation, when .needed, of 
itself. God, through the voice of Nature, calls the mass 
of men to be happy: He calls a few among them to the 
grander task of being severely but serenely sad. 

* “ Yet there are some to whom a strength is given, 

A Will, a self-constraining Energy, 

A Faith that feeds upon no earthly hope, 

Which never thinks of Victory, combating 
Because it ought to combat, .... 

And, conscious that to find in Martyrdom 
The stamp and signet of most perfect Life 
Is all the science that Mankind can reach, 

Rejoicing fights and still rejoicing falls.” 

The Combat of Life, by R. M. Milnes. 




220 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


The case, however, as thus far stated, is but fragmentary. 
The happiness of the Human Race is one of the designs 
of God, but our own individual happiness must not be 
made our first or our direct aim. To the mass of men, as 
a rule, enjoyment will come if we fulfil the laws of our 
Being ; but it was not for this alone, nor for this first, that 
Life was given. If we set it before us as our chief object; 
if we pursue it with conscious and relentless purpose; 
still more if we seek it by any short cuts or private path¬ 
ways of our own, or by any road save that by which Prov¬ 
idence has prescribed without engaging that it shall lead 
to any special or certain goal on earth, we may, or we may 
not, be happy ; but assuredly we shall have failed in carry¬ 
ing out a further design of the Creator, — at least as in¬ 
disputable as the first, namely, The Moral Progress and 
Perfection of the Individual and the Race. Let us not 
“ speak unto ourselves smooth things and prophesy de¬ 
ceits.” The Cup of Life which God offers to our lips is 
not always sweet: it is an unworthy weakness to endeavor 
to persuade ourselves of such a falsehood; but, sweet or 

a 

bitter, it is ours to drink it without murmur or demur. It 
is not true that those who obey the laws of God, and listen 
to his voice, and follow where he calls, are always thereby 
taking the surest and directest way to an enjoyed exist¬ 
ence : sometimes His finger points in a precisely opposite 
direction. Often — usually indeed —“ lie gives happiness 
in, gives it as what Aristotle calls an eiriyvofxe.vov reAo? • 
but lie gives it with a mysterious and uncontrollable 
Sovereignty; it is no part of the terms on which He ad¬ 
mits us to His service, still less is it the end which we 




THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE. 


221 


may propose to ourselves on entering His service.* Happi¬ 
ness lie gives to whom He will, or leaves to the Angel of 
Nature to distribute among those who fulfil the laws on 
which it depends. But to serve God and love him is 
higher and better than happiness, though it be with 
wounded feet, and bleeding brow, and hearts loaded with 
sorrow.” 

We have already dwelt enough on our conviction that 
the progress of humanity, the improvement of the world, 
the mitigation of its anomalies, the extinction of its woes, 
the eradication of its vices, — in a word, the realization of 
the ideal of life, is the great design of God and the great 
work of man. But though the perfectation of the Race is 
the great, it is clear that it is not the sole, purpose or sig¬ 
nificance of life. The perfectation of the Individual is in¬ 
dicated by marks just as obvious. We are sent here and 
endowed thus, not only to do our utmost for the improve¬ 
ment and progress of the world, but to do our utmost also 
for the development, utilization, purification, and strength¬ 
ening of our own individual natures. The riddle of life 
cannot be even approximately read without this assump¬ 
tion. For obedience to the laws of God written on the 
face of Nature, the cultivation of those virtues and affec¬ 
tions whose sacredness is written on our hearts, and on 
which the beauty and the joy of life depend, lead to such 
progressive excellence. Moreover the advance and eleva- 

* u Ask we no more, — content with these, 

Let present comfort, pleasure, ease, 

As Heaven shall with them, come and go, — 

The Secret this of Rest below.” — Keblb. 




222 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 




tion of Humanity is most surely promoted by whatever 
wholesomely, harmoniously, and permanently develops the 
individual man. It is by the enlightened and disinterested 
service of his fellow-being that he most surely strengthens 
and idealizes his own nature. He cannot carry forward 
one of the purposes of Providence without ipso facto con¬ 
tributing to the other. And finally, there is one dark page 
in the philosophy of life which no other creed can irradi¬ 
ate. We mean the fact, so perplexing yet so constant, of 
men whose youth and maturity are spent in struggle and 
in failure, and who attain wisdom and virtue only at the 
close of their career; who begin to see clearly only when 
clear vision has grown useless; who become thoroughly 
qualified for the work of life and the service of humanity 
just as life is ebbing away and the arena of earthly ac¬ 
tivity is closed to them. Man sometimes seems ordained 
to spend his allotted span in sharpening his tools and 
learning how to use them, and to be called out of the 
workshop the moment his industrial education is complete. 
If one set of facts points irresistibly to the conclusion 
that he was sent on earth to do God’s work in mendinsf. 
beautifying, and guiding it, the other more than insinuates 
the inference that the world is a school where he is to 
learn his craft, but not the only scene on which he is to 
practise it, a whetstone on which he is to shape and sharpen 
his faculties, a sort of corpus vile on which he is to ex¬ 
periment, not for its sake only, but for his own. We 
accept both conclusions : and probably the inconsistency 
between them is more apparent than real. If the first 
design had been the only one or the most pressing, the 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE. 


223 


mode in which it is carried out would indeed he perplex- 
ingly slow and indirect. Its being interwoven with the 
second may suggest a clew out of the labyrinth. God 
meant man to perfect the world in and by perfecting his 
own nature: for the latter task Man has, perhaps, but 
this brief fragment of Time; for the former, God has the 
whole long lifetime of the Human Eace. 

Life then is meant for enjoyment and for toil; but it is 
meant also that the enjoyment should never be unmingled 
or supreme, and that the toil should never be wholly re¬ 
munerative or successful. This is, then, designed to be 
an ■unsatisfying world. No handwriting on the wall was 
ever more startlingv distinct than this. The conclusions 
of Ecclesiastes are echoed by every man to whom experi¬ 
ence has given the faculty and the materials of thought. 
The intensest joy we have ever felt has been usually so 
alloyed. The most unalloyed joy we have ever felt has 
been so passing. 

“ Medio de fonte leporum 
Surgit amari alicpiid quod ipsis in floribus angat.” 

We can fancy, too, so much purer and brighter than we 
have known. Nay, we have caught glimpses of so much 
that we could neither grasp nor retain. The actual has 
been very beautiful; but it is insufficient in the view of 
a possible far lovelier still. 

“ Science for man unlocks her varied store 
And gives enough to wake the wish for more. 

Enough of good to kindle strong desire ; 

Enough of ill to damp the rising fire ; 



224 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


Enough of joy and sorrow, fear and hope, 

To fan desire and give the passions scope ; 

Enough of disappointment, sorrow, pain, 

To seal the Wise Man’s sentence, ‘ All is vain,’ 

And quench the wish to live those years again ! ” 

Then the labors of the ablest and most successful are so 
disappointing and unfruitful. Of a thousand seeds sown, 
and watered with blood and tears, only one ripens to the 
full ear. A thousand soldiers die in the trenches for one 
who mounts the breach. Half our efforts are in a wrong 
direction, and the other half are too clumsy or feeble to 
attain their aim. Ho ! if at the close of life we can say 
we have enjoyed much happiness and done some good, 
we shall have cause for deep gratitude and humble hope; 
but a sense of complacency, of satisfaction, as of a part 
fulfilled and a work accomplished, can belong to no man 
who looks back over his course with a single eye, and in 
the light of an approaching change. The finer the spirit, 
the profounder the insight, the more unconquerable is 
this feeling of disappointment; an irresistible intimation 
that this world was not given us to be rested in, to be 
acquiesced in as the only one, or the brightest one ; a 
conviction and a suggestion sent to weaken our passion¬ 
ate attachment to a scene which else it might have been 
too hard to quit. 

Finally, we must conclude that the problem of Man’s 
Wherefore, Whence, and Whither was meant to be insol¬ 
uble. When we reflect upon the number of consummate 
intellects, gifted with every variety of mental endowment 





THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE. 


225 


and rich in every moral excellence which gives clearness 
to the vision and depth to the spiritual intuition, who, age 
after age, have exhausted thought in fruitless efforts to 
discern the word of the great Enigma, it seems idle to 
fancy that we can he more fortunate than they. Centu¬ 
ries have added scarcely one new fact to the materials on 
which reason has to work, nor perfected a single one of 
the faculties by which that work is to be done. We 
possess scarcely a single item of knowledge of Divine or 
of Human Nature which was not as familiar to Plato 
and to Job as to ourselves: assuredly we have no pro¬ 
founder poetic insight than the one, no finer philosophic 
instrument than the other. What baffled them may well 
baffle us also. 

Of the dark riddles and incomprehensive anomalies 
and strange perplexities of which life is full, some very 
few we can unravel; of others we can discern just enough 
to guess at the solution. The deepest and the saddest 
must ever remain to try our faitli and to grieve our 
hearts. We see enough to make us believe that there is 
a solution, and that that solution is such as will accord 
with the serene perfections of the Godhead. We have 
light enough to walk by, to tread the few steps that lie 
immediately before us. We need not then murmur or 
despair or doubt because we cannot see our way through 
the thick forest and to the end of the long journey. Sol¬ 
diers must often be content to fight their appointed battle 
without insisting on understanding the whole plan of the 
campaign. 

That the good are often wretched, and the worthless 
10* 


o 



226 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


prosperous and happy; that sunshine and sorrow follow 
no rule of effort or desert; that the beautiful and noble 
are cut off in youth, and the stained and mean drag their 
ignominy through a long career: these things we can con- 
, ceive may be rectified hereafter and elsewhere. That 
those whose life is devoted to laboring in God’s vineyard 
and carrying out His holy purposes are perpetually called 
.away in the midst of their widest usefulness and on the 
eve of some signal and fruitful victory; while others 
whose whole aim seems to be to violate his commands 
and counterwork his benevolent designs live out their 
threescore years and ten in mischief and in power, is 
a puzzle to which even our philosophy can sometimes 
suggest the key; since history has shown us that the 
progress of Humanity is now and then best served by 
the triumph of the bad man and the discomfiture of the 
good cause. The infinite slowness with which man 
advances to his final goal; the feebleness and vacillation 
with which he works out his allotted destiny; his fre¬ 
quent apparent retrogressions into barbarism and iniq¬ 
uity ; the ebbs and flows of the tide of civilization: to 
all these we may be reconciled by the supposition that 
perhaps the imperfect conditions of our Being render this 
progress at once the surest and the fastest possible. But 
there are stranger and gloomier perplexities than these. 
There are chastisements that do not chasten; there are 
trials that do not purify, and sorrows that do not elevate; 
there are pains and privations that harden the tender 
heart without softening the stubborn will; there is “ light 
that leads astray ”; there are virtues that dig their own 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE. 


227 


grave. There are pure searchers after truth whose martyr 
spirit has never reached the martyr’s crown, whose strug¬ 
gle for the light which God has commanded them to seek 
has only led them into “ a land of darkness, as darkness 
itself, and where the light is as darkness.” There are souls 
to be reckoned by the million, low, grovelling, undeveloped, 
desperately bad, and which could scarcely, save by miracle, 
have been other than they are. What becomes of them \ 
Why are they here ? What do they mean ? It is hard 
to find no answer to such questions. It would be yet 
worse to simulate content with official answers at once 
inadequate and consciously untrue. 






VI 


DE PROFUNDIS. 


“ Obstinate questionings 
Of sense and outward things ; 

Fallings from us, vanishings : 

Blank misgivings of a creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized.” 

Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality. 


DE PEOFUNDIS, 


T is not by shirking difficulties that we can remove 



JL them or escape then! ; nor by evading the perplexing 
problems of life or speculation that we can hope to solve 
them ; nor by saying, “ Hush, hush ! ” to every over-subtle 
questioner that the question can be answered or the asker 
silenced. Men cannot go on forever living upon half- 
exploded shams; keeping obsolete laws with admittedly 
false preambles on their Statute-book; professing creeds 
only half credited and quite incredible; standing and 
sleeping on suspected or on recognized volcanoes; erect¬ 
ing both their dwellings and their temples on ice which 
the first dreaded rays of sunlight they know must melt 
away.' We cannot always keep clouds and darkness 
round about us ; and it is a miserable condition alike 
for men and nations to feel dependent upon being able 
permanently to enforce blindness and maintain silence; 
to live as it were intellectually on sufferance; to shiver 

i 

under an uneasy semi-consciousness that all their delicate 
fabrics of Thought and Peace lie at the mercy of the first 
pertinacious questioner or rude logician. Yet how rare is 
the robust faitli or the simple courage which boldly inter- 



232 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


rogates the darkness, believing that thus only can the 
light be reached! The question may not lead us to the 
truth; but at least it saves us from sheltering ourselves 
behind known or suspected error. 

How few of us sincerely and confidently believe our 
own creeds either in philosophy or religion ! How sel¬ 
dom do we dare either to think them out, or act them 
out! Take one example, which opens a wide field ol 
perplexing speculation. 

The received doctrine is that God puts a soul into 
every human being at his birth, that is, that whenever 
man makes a body, God makes a soul, or sends a pre¬ 
existing soul, to inhabit it; or that, in some mysterious 
fashion, with the commencement of earthly life com¬ 
mences also the life of an immortal nature. On the 
assumption, then, of man’s free agency (an essential post¬ 
ulate of all intelligible reasoning on moral questions), 
it would seem to lie in man’s decision how many souls 
shall be created or incarnated, and when, and pretty 
much to what earthly conditions and influences. On his 
determination, or passion, or it may on his indulgence of 
a momentary appetite, depends the question whether an 
immortal spirit shall be called into existence, and shall 
encounter, — having no voice in the matter, — not only 
the risks and sufferings of this short human life, but the 
incalculable and fearful chances of an unending life to 
come. Can this really be so ? Are we prepared to adopt 
this corollary, or rather this plain statement of our belief ? 
Yet how can we avoid it ? If man has a soul, when else 
can it come to him except at birth ? If man’s act origi- 




DE PROFUNDIS. 


233 


nate the soul as well as the body, if the soul he an attri¬ 
bute or necessary accompaniment of the body, then this 
is either materialism, or it makes man the creator of an 
immortal spirit. He has an unlimited, or at least an 
indefinite, credit on the Treasury of Spiritual Being. 

There is yet another perplexity that meets us here. 
The moment of birth is a singularly critical and danger¬ 
ous one. Perhaps our life is never in such jeopardy as 
at its outset. Whether separate existence shall begin, 
whether the infant shall breathe and live, or sink back 
into the limbo of inchoate organizations, often depends 
upon the skill of the midwife, upon a movement, or a 
stimulus administered in time. Do the awful issues of 
eternal life really hang upon a thread like this ? 

It will be replied that, as an indisputable fact, we 
know it docs depend pretty much upon man’s will or 
caprice, or the competence of an accoucheur, whether a 
human being shall be born to the conditions and casual¬ 
ties of this earthly life; and the difficulties surrounding 
the other problem are only the difficulties surrounding 
this one, enormously magnified and extended. Well, 
then, suppose the assumption of man’s-power to call 
immortal beings into existence acquiesced in, — no means 
of escape from it being apparent, save the purely material 
hypothesis. We proceed. 

The Calvinist believes that only a small fraction of the 
human race can be saved, and that the vast residue will 
be doomed to endless and unspeakable torments; that 
“ strait is the gate and narrow the way that leadeth unto 
life, and few there be that find it ” ; that the elect are 




234 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


scanty and the reprobate are legion; that, of any given 
number who come into the world, the overwhelming 
majority will be damned. There is no mistake about it. 
He does not mince matters. He knows, he believes, he 
says every day, it is the salient article of his creed, that 
ninety-nine out of every hundred are predestined to eter¬ 
nal suffering; that, if he has ten children, it is probable 
that all, it is certain that nearly all, will burn in hell for 
everlasting ages; that, in fact, except in cases incalcula¬ 
bly rare, his married life is spent in furnishing souls for 

• * 

Satan, poor babies for endless misery and damnation, 
helpless victims for the wrath of God. If he believed 
all this, would he ever dare to become a father ? If, 
believing all this, he yet does so dare, where shall we 
find words strong enough to denounce his hardened and 
7 horrible barbarity ? Marriage in itself, the mere condi¬ 
tion which renders such consequences possible, must be a 
\ sin which no other iniquity can equal. For it cannot be 
that he believes all his own children will be saved. He 
cannot lay this flattering unction to his conscience. His 
creed does not permit him to do so. He knows that the 
Divine wrath is so consuming, and the Divine mercy 
• so scant, and the rescued so incalculably few, that the 
chances are almost infinite against any child he has. 
He cannot imagine, as in worldly matters he might, as in 
spiritual matters other Christians can, that he may by 
prayer and training secure the, salvation of his children. 
Ho ! his creed tells him that all this is settled before¬ 
hand, and cannot be affected by any act or negligence of 
his. How, if any earthly father knew that probably all 



DE PROFUNDIS. 


oor 

iOJ 


liis children — that assuredly nine out of ten — would he 
seized by ruthless conscription and sent to drag out their 
whole lives in the severest anguish, who, with a spark of 
affection or humanity or decent sense of justice, would 
ever dream of marriage or paternity ? Yet the Calvinist 
knows that they are destined irrevocably to a fate im¬ 
measurably more horrible and lasting, yet he multiplies 
without mercv or remorse. Does he believe his creed ? 

Again. Most Christians now adopt a happier and less 
dishonoring creed. They are beginning more and more 
to trust in a good God. They profess to believe that 
Salvation is for all, and within reach of all, though they 
differ as to the terms of its attainment. They hold that 
sedulous prayer, and due care in bringing up their chil¬ 
dren in the true faith and in sound practices, will, as a 
rule, secure their eternal existence in indescribable enjoy¬ 
ments. Many, an increasing number, stretch their char¬ 
ity wider still, and indulge in a more universal hope. 
They believe — and it seems to uninjured lay intellects 
a necessary corollary from God’s goodness that they 
should belie ve —that all will be ultimately saved, though 
possibly through much suffering and after various stages 
of probation; that of all human creatures who once enter 
upon earthly life, endless and ineffable felicity will be 
the certain and final lot: — 

“ That not one Life shall be destroyed 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 

When God hath made the pile complete.” 

It follows that on them is conferred the blessed privi- 




236 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


lege of calling into being nearly as many deferred angels 
as they please, of creating reversionary heirs of glory 
and of bliss as surely and as largely as an earthly mon¬ 
arch can create Peers. This being their creed (and, 
granting the original premises we see nothing to gainsay 
in the inferential superstructure), their logical course of 
action would seem to be clearly pointed out. They must 
multiply as fast as they can; not an hour must be 
wasted, nor an opportunity lost, nor a possible agent un¬ 
employed. Celibacy becomes almost a sin, at the least, 
a neglect of duty, a foregoing of privilege, a selfish 
omission of the means of conferring such ultimate happi¬ 
ness as we can scarcely dream of here. There can be no 
need for us to pause to consider whether we can support 
the children we bring into the world, transmit to them 
healthy organizations, maintain them in comfort or in 
life, place them in decent or in morally advantageous 
positions : all these are matters of very secondary mo¬ 
ment ; for what is any amount or severity of transient 
suffering in a probationary state in comparison with that 
marvellous and enduring felicity which, once in life, is 
their secure inheritance at last ? It may be that the 
earlier the death the sooner the desired haven can be 
reached. All that parental care and education can effect 
is to make their period of suffering and training termi¬ 
nate with this earth. A footing once gained thereon, the 
rest is a mere question of time, and of the greater or less 
degree of comfort in which the intervening time is passed 
before the future angel enters on his inheritance. The 
greatest benefactor of his species must, therefore, be the 




DE PROFUNDI S. 


237 


man who is parent of most children, and multiplication 
be the worthiest function of Humanity. 

1 et who can admit such conclusions ? and who can 
regard as sound the premises from which they flow ? 


It would seem clear that, in the eyes or according to 
the doctrine of the orthodox, those who believe that sal¬ 
vation is to be obtained certainly, and only, through the 
name of Christ, procreation must be a sin, or at least a 
calamity and a cruelty among the heathen, — innocent or 
virtuous only among the nations of Christendom; a be¬ 
nevolence in England, a barbarity in China or Thibet. 


The pious Theist, who conceives that immortal life is 
conferred at birth, but that immortal happiness is to be 
purchased by virtue and desert alone, should regard pater¬ 
nity as permissible only where virtue is possible , and as 
righteous only where virtue is probable. Yet clearly this 
is not nature’s view of the matter, since those classes who 
are placed in circumstances least favorable to improve¬ 
ment and spiritual development usually have the procre¬ 
ative habit and faculty the strongest. 


On any theory it is not to be denied that the diffi¬ 
culties in the way of those who believe in a future life 
and a spiritual being are extreme. With our limited 
capacities and scanty knowledge it could scarcely have 
been otherwise. Perhaps the following train of thought 
may do something towards suggesting a solution. If 







238 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


? 

birth be in reality the creation of an undying soul with 
the alternative of future happiness or misery "presented to 
it, according to its use of this life, and all that man (by 
Divine permission or connivance) does is to call into 
existence a candidate for a glorious or a dreadful future, 
then it is equitably essential that the possibility of the 
former should be truly ivitliin its choice ; that it should 
be placed in circumstances and endowed with sufficient 
strength and freedom of volition to render its decision 
really optional; that is, that the better fate should be 
distinctly attainable by its powers and with its inherited 
or congenital propensities and dispositions. Can we say 
that this free choice is bona fide secured to all, or to 
most ? Yet clearly, if there are human creatures to 
whom this real option is virtually denied by surrounding 
conditions, or vicious or defective education, or faulty 
organization, or innate perverse and ungovernable pro¬ 
pensities, or withheld opportunities, then, either they 
have no soul, or that soul is not immortal, or other lives 
of fairer probation will be granted them, or God is in¬ 
deed the Being he is represented to be in the blasphemies 
of so many Christian sects. There seems no way out of 

t/ 

this inference. 

Probably, however, what God bestows at birth is a 
germ, not a finished Entity, — not an immortal soul, but 
a natuie capable ol being worlccd up into a soul worthy 
of immortality, an organization rich in the strangest and 
grandest potentialities; not a possession, but an opportu- 
nity; not an inheritance, but the chance of winning one. 
Perhaps it may be cifiy such natures as develop ade- 




DE PROFUNDIS. 


239 


quately and in the right direction in this life, that will be 
heirs of Heaven, and that all others may, as it were, never 
pass beyond the embryonic or earthly stage of existence. 
The question of their development must depend upon 
their inherited organizations combined with the aggregate 
of influences which surround them. Those who believe 
in the Darwinian theory of evolution, and measure the 
distance which man has travelled, according to that grand 
hypothesis, from the Monad to the Saint and the Philoso¬ 
pher, need have no difficulty in conceiving the scarcely 
vaster progress which our suggestion postulates. Yet it 
cannot be disguised that, even on this supposition- we 
come upon a tremendous moral perplexity, only less 
startling than those we have already commented upon. 
For what awful issues then depend upon the parents, 
often ignorant, often destitute, often brutal, usually quite 
insensible or only half awakened to their gigantic respon¬ 
sibilities ! It lies with them to say —or rather it is 
determined by casualties and external circumstances, by 
organization healthy or morbid, by location, by opportu¬ 
nities, by a thousand influences of which they themselves 
are scarcely more than the victims and the shuttlecocks 
— whether the children they bring into the world shall 
be mere mortal creatures or immortal angels. Is this 
conjecture more credible than those we have discarded ? 
Indeed, is any conception attractive, or reposing, or truly 
credible in this “ land of darkness, as darkness itself, and 
where the Light is as darkness ” ? 


“ Behold, we know not anything.” 




240 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


Another set of speculations, nearly as perplexing, must 
often have been presented to thoughtful minds. Few 
travellers trained to appreciate beauty and magnificence 
in all their manifestations can have surveyed the gorgeous 
temples in which the early Indians and Egyptians en¬ 
shrined their grotesque idols and their strange concep¬ 
tions of Deity, without the half-involuntary exclamation, 
“ Thank God for a false religion ! or at least for the mar¬ 
vellous productions it has inspired.” The same sentiment 
rises still more irresistibly in the minds of cultivated 
Christians, when standing in the plains of Baal bee or 
Palmyra, by the waste shores of Psestum, or at the foot 
of the unrivalled Parthenon, and thinking what sort of 
gQds were they whose worship suggested those exquisite 
monuments to the finest races of the Ancient World, and 
carried taste almost to inspiration: “ Thank God for a 
false religion!” A similar impression forces just the 
same utterance from the zealous Protestant, if lie be a 
man of culture as well as zeal, as he comes forth from the 
Duomo of Florence or Milan, from St. Mark’s at Venice 
or St. Peter’s at Eome, and marvels at the glorious struct¬ 
ures which intense devotion to what he deems little less, 
than anti-Christian faith could rear in the dark days of 
Catholic supremacy. “ Thank God,” he exclaims, “ for 
a false religion ! ” And then as he turns homeward, and 
stands lost in admiration near the front of Salisbury, or 
Westminster, or Lincoln, or any other of our own cathe¬ 
drals, he hears his phrase echoed at his side by the Meth¬ 
odist or Banter, issuing from a bare, unlovely, whitewashed 
Bethel in a neighboring alley, who, half shocked at the 



DE PROFUNDIS. 


241 


unholy thought, can yet scarcely deny that even the 
surpassing purity of his own creed does but imperfectly 
atone for the comparatively wretched house of God in 
which it has to he repeated. The contrast between the 
temples inspired by the false faith and the true is painful 
even to him. 

But false religions have inspired grander monuments 
than temples and cathedrals, and demand our gratitude for 
achievements of a nobler character. They have been the 
parents of courage, obedience, endurance, and self-sacrifice. 
In proportion to the measure of their truth, according to 
the tenets of their creeds and the fancied attributes of 
their Deities, they have guided for good or evil the morals 
of mankind ; but they have given to their votaries power 
to do and to bear, with little direct reference to the char¬ 
acteristics of the faith itself. Often the gods worshipped 
have been hideous, monstrous, impossible, immoral; often 
the doctrines held have been revolting and maleficent; 
often the purest faiths have been disfigured by the most in¬ 
congruous corruptions : but good or bad, true or false, they 
have nearly all had one feature in common, — the faculty 
they inspired of dethroning the present and suppressing 
self. The direction of their influence has been determined 
by their essence ; the amount of that influence, their motive 
power over humanity, has been in proportion to the abso¬ 
luteness of the credence they commanded. They have 
inspired the sublimest virtues and the most frightful 
crimes ; but men have died and slain with about equal 
confidence for all alike; all alike have had their martyrs 
and their heroes; life, ease, pleasure, earthly possessions 

u p 


V 









242 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


have been readily sacrificed by the devotees of every 
faith, at the dictate of its authorities and in the certainty 
of its rewards. In thanking God for false religions, 
therefore, as for true ones, we are grateful for that which 
is common to them all, — the power they possess of in¬ 
spiring human fortitude and human effort. 

Becognizing, then, that many false religions have exer¬ 
cised in some respects an elevating influence on mankind, 
and that others, in which truth and error are mingled in 
various proportions, still largely operate for good, we per¬ 
ceive, too, that in all cases they have this strengthening 
and ennobling grace, mainly if not entirely, because they 
are firmly held , because no doubt mingles with the faith 
of the worshipper, or impairs the blind simplicity of his 
devotion. If he had any misgivings he could not “ greatly 
dare or nobly die.” It is only his certainty that sends 
him to the battle-field, or sustains him at the stake, or 
enables him to bear up through the long and weary mar¬ 
tyrdom of life. The very salt of his religion to him lies 
in his absolute conviction of its truth. If he were not 
positively certain of its divine origin and sanctions, it 
would lose its magic hold upon his actions and emotions. 
Now, it is precisely this certainty (to which all religions 
pretend and which is essential to the influence of them 
all) which, nevertheless, thoughtful and sincere minds 
know to be the one element of falsehood, the one untrue 
dogma, common to them all. They may differ on every¬ 
thing else; the Gods t]iey proclaim may be as discrepant 
as light and darkness, the articles of their creed may be 
very approximately true or very manifestly false, their 



DE PROFUNDIS. 


243 


codes of morals may be severally beneficent or noxious, the 
spirit breathing through them may be the loveliest or the 
harshest; but they all agree in affirming that their faith 


came to them by more or less direct revelation from on 
High, admits of no question, and contains no flaw. In 
this they all lie (all except one, at least, every one admits); 
the votaries ol each believe that all others lie except 


their own; philosophers insist that there is and can be 
no^ exception. We Europeans know Uiat the Orientals 
err in maintaining that Buddha or Vishnu was incarnated 
in this form or in that, and taught the true faith to man. 
We Christians know that Jupiter and Minerva never 
ajipeared in human shape to give consistence and sanc¬ 
tion to the Pagan creeds. We Jews are certain that the 
law given to Moses on Mount Sinai was never abrogated 
by a later and sublimer prophet. We Protestants know 
that the Holy Spirit never dictated to the successors of 
St. Peter the strange dogmas of salvation which those 
successors are now issuing in its name to votaries who 
are bound to accept them as absolute and certain truth. 
We Unitarians and other Dissidents entirely repudiate 
many of the doctrines which the English Church submis¬ 
sively receives from councils and congresses at which the 
Spirit of the Most High .was asserted to preside ; and 
what the orthodox regard as certain we reject as utterly 
unsound. And finally, we Philosophers and men of sci¬ 
ence know, with a conviction at least as positive as that 
of any of these Believers, that they are all wrong, that no 
such dicta have ever been delivered, and that no such 
knowledge about the Unknowable can be ever reached. 


) 





244 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


It is, therefore, just this special claim to certainty (to 
absolute, authoritative truth) which is the inspiring and life- 
giving power of all religions, which is also the one false ele¬ 
ment common to them all. Here then is the startling con¬ 
clusion alluded to at the outset. It seems to follow that 
error is necessary to float and vivify truth, that religions 
hold and exercise their mighty and elevating sway over • 
human imagination and volition by virtue of the one 
fundamental assumption or assertion common to them all, 
and which in all alike is false* 


The matter lies in very small compass, and a few words 
will do as well as many to state it. True religions — that 
Is, religions destitute of this one indispensable false dogma 
— would not suffice either to guide, support, inspire, or 

* It would lead us too far from our immediate subject to discuss 
how much the errors mingled with the belief of the ordinary Chris¬ 
tian world aided the spread of Christianity at the outset, and serve 

* 

to give currency and acceptance to it now. Many of these, which 
Ave may term auxiliary errors, would of course be denied to be errors 
by the orthodox ; but there is one which lias long been recognized 
and proved to be such, as to which there can be no dispute. Prob¬ 
ably, of all the secondary causes which contributed to the rapid ad¬ 
vance of Christianity in the early times, and gave it its wonderful 
power over the conduct of believers, none was so effective as the 
doctrine which it preached — and which appears to have been univer¬ 
sally accepted both by Apostles and Disciples — of the approaching 
end of the world. No other conviction could have so transformed 
(as we know that it did transform) the whole nature and views of 
those who held it. Yet none could be more erroneous. [See “ Creed 







DE PROFUNDIS. 


245 


restrain men, as men now are, nor to fascinate tlieir imagi¬ 
nations, nor to command tlieir unhesitating allegiance 
and submission. Their imperfect culture, and their low 
stage of intelligence need and demand absolute certainty 
and positive dogma. Doctrines which resulted from a 
mere balance of probabilities, which were, and avowed 
themselves to be, simply the conclusions of mature and 
enlightened reason, would have no adequate hold on their 
belief. Laws of conduct laid down as imperative, merely 
as being conformable to the sound instincts of sound 
natures, and as plainly conducive or indispensable to the 
good of mankind and of themselves in the long run, would 
have no adequate hold on their obedience. The uncul¬ 
tured mass of mankind — especially in crises of passion 
— will neither be moved nor curbed by being told, or even 
convinced, “ If you act thus or thus you will contravene 
the purposes of your Creator, and injure your fellow- 

of Christendom,” pp. 181 and 270.] Macaulay has a striking passage 
in one of his earliest writings, depicting the marvellous aid which the 
anthropomorphism, early imported into Christian conceptions, ren¬ 
dered to the progress of the new faith. (“ Essays,” I. p. 22.) “ God, 
the uncreated, the incomprehensible, the invisible, attracted few 
worshippers. A Philosopher might admire so noble a conception, 
but the crowd turned away in disgust from words which presented 
no image to their minds. It was before the Deity embodied in a 
human form, walking among men, partaking of their infirmities, 
leaning on their bosoms, weeping over tlieir graves, slumbering in 
the manger, bleeding on the cross,—that the prejudices of the 
Synagogue, and the doubts of the Academy, and the pride of the 
Portico, and the fasces of the Lictor, and the swords of thirty legions 
were humbled hi the dust.” 




246 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


creatures and yourself.” They need (what, indeed, in 
ultimate analysis is merely the same assertion in a coarser 
and more concrete form) the announcement, “ God spake 
these words and said,” and, “ Heaven or hell will he 
your portion according as you observe them or disobey 
them.” They can realize and bow down before a revela¬ 
tion which was issued from a cloud or behind a veil, amid 
thunder and darkness, and uttered in their own vernacular 
by a human or anthropomorphic voice, — all which acces¬ 
saries should in truth be felt as so many reasons for dis¬ 
trusting it; but a revelation whispered by the still small 
voice of the Most High to the purified consciences and 
the exercised reason of the selected sages of the race, 
seems to them announced on mere human authority, and 
is set at naught at pleasure. The sages, therefore, to whom 
such religious and legislative wisdom has been vouchsafed 
— unless their love of truth transcended their love of 
power and their desire to serve mankind — have habitu¬ 
ally clothed the revelations made to them with the needed 
orthodox conventional accompaniments; have falsified 
their creed in order to float it; have alloyed their pure 
metal with earthly admixture to make it workable ; and 
have borrowed for the sacred vision of the Prophet the 
fallacious but indispensable imprimatur of the Priest. 
Even among communities far removed from that ruder 
stage when material manifestations of the divinity are in 
favor, something of the same want is felt, and is supplied 
in something of the same fashion. The sluggishness and 
love of pleasure of even comparatively cultivated men 
need exaggeration respectively to stimulate or to control 



DE PROFUNDIS. 


247 


them. A faith, which was avowedly but the outcome of 
what the highest human intelligences could discover or 
divine, would never be clung to with credence absolute 
enough to take men to the stake in its behalf; scarcely 
even to the battle-field,, if the battle had not an attraction 
of its own. A cause, however good and noble, valued only 
as sober thinkers would value it, — regarded as 'probably 
and on the whole beneficent, as philosophers would express 
their tepid allegiance, — would not inspire sufficient en¬ 
thusiasm to make men either toil through a laborious life 
or brave a painful death. How few are the aims which it 
is not necessary to overestimate, if we are to work for them 
devotedly or to suffer for them gladly! How few are not 
indebted for their commanding fascinations to the merci¬ 
ful disguises, or the beautifying draperies, or the glorifying 
halos, or the magnifying mists which our fancy or our 
ignorance throws round them ! 

A corollary would seem to flow from the above reflec¬ 
tions which sounds questionable, but the fallacy lurking 
in which — if it be fallacious — is not easy to perceive. 
The time, we hope, will come (and to hasten its arrival 
should be the aim of all the wise and good) when man¬ 
kind will have advanced so far beyond their present 
moral and intellectual stage, that true religion will be as 
receivable and as influential as false religion is now ; 
when error and exaggeration and misstatements as to its 
origin and sanctions will no longer be essential to its 
dominion over the minds of men. But since, in the 
mean time, religions require for their efficacy the element 
of untruth of which we have spoken, in exact proportion 




248 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


to the ignorance, torpor, and want of enlightenment 
which prevail in the world, how far may it not be per¬ 
missible, perhaps our duty, tacitly to accept, to acquiesce 
in, or possibly even to preach this fundamental but indis¬ 
pensable misrepresentation ? Was the old system of 
esoteric creeds worthy of the unmeasured condemnation 
heaped upon it in more ardent days ? May it not some¬ 
times be incumbent upon those whose function it is to 
direct the religious conceptions of a nation to teach doc¬ 
trines or histories they do not believe, or at least to 
assume and to uphold that lying legend which serves as 
the basis of so much invaluable truth, — of truth, more-. 
over, that would not hold its ground among the mass of 
men, if the unsoundness of its basis were laid bare ? 
The question is not one of speculative casuistry. It repre¬ 
sents a sad and most real perplexity to thousands of 
conscientious minds. Probably the one safe practical 
conclusion in the matter will be this : to leave the falla¬ 
cious foundation, even though a pervading error, alone, 

— so long as no noxious superstructure is built upon it, 

— so long as the falsehood is not thrust upon us as the 
gem and essence of the creed, — so long as it is not 
called up to warrant dishonoring views of God, doctrines 
adverse to human happiness and progress, mental fetters 
and darkness, or priestly insolence or cruelty. It is not 
that we would give even a momentary countenance to 
that purely political conception of religion which regards 
the Ten Commandments as a sort of “ cheap defence ” 
of property and life, God Almighty as an ubiquitous and 
unpaid Policeman, and Hell as a self-supporting jail, a 



DE PROFUNDIS. 


249 


penal settlement at the Antipodes; but that in the best 
creeds as held and promulgated by their wisest votaries, 
the truth they contain is so noble and beneficent, and the 
error so nearly confined to the original false assumption at 
the root, that the balance of good influence is incalculable. 

“ 0 Thou that after toil and storm 

Mayest seem to have reached a purer air, 

TV hose laith has centre everywhere, 

Nor cares to fix itself to form, 

“ Leave thou thy sister, when she prays, 

Her early Heaven, her happy views ; 

Nor thou with shadowed hints confuse 
A life that leads melodious days. 

“ Her faith through form is pure as thine, 

Her hands are quicker unto good : 

O, sacred be the flesh and blood 
To which she links a truth divine ! ” 

Tennyson, In Memorlum. 


One more “ cry out of the depths,” in reference to the 
oldest and perhaps darkest perplexity of all, — Prayer. 

The instinct of prayer, of appeal for help in difficulty 
and rescue in peril, is an inevitable consequence and cor¬ 
relative of belief in God, in a Being who can hear and 
answer, who has made us and who cares for the creatures 
He has made. It flows from the consciousness of our 
inferiority and His superiority, of our helplessness and 
His power. It is an original and nearly irresistible in¬ 
stinct, precisely similar to that which makes the child 







250 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


run to the mother, and the feeble cling to and entreat the . 
strong. We can scarcely imagine its extinction. We 
cannot picture to ourselves what our nature would be if 
it were extinguished. Yet reason and reflection, science 
and logic, set their face steadily against it, strive to prove 
the instinct unphilosophical, and are forever at work 
paring the doctrine of the efficacy of prayer away. We 
cannot gainsay them, yet we are unable, cordially and 
conclusively, to accept their conclusions or to act upon 
them. Here, as so often in our deeper investigations, 
we are taught the hard lesson of intellectual humility, 

V 

by finding corollaries which we cannot, admit flowing 
clearly and strictly from premises which we cannot deny. 

The absurdity of Prayer to God, with any belief in. its 
efficacy, comes out most strongly in the practice — which 
dates from the rudest ages and has survived unbroken to 
our own — of two armies, on the eve of battle, each 
appealing to the same God of Hosts to crown their arms 
with victory. There was sense, or at least consistency, in 
this in the days when the gods were national deities, rival 
celestial powers, each of which had his special proteges 
and votaries. No words can do adequate justice to the 
incoherence of the practice now. Two vast crowds of 
men, trusting in the same Saviour and worshipping the 
same God, professing a religion which most solemnly 
denounces the bad passions raging in their bosoms and 
the special crime they are about to consummate, draw 
their swords, load their muskets, range their cannon, and 
while awaiting the signal to commence their mutual 
•slaughter, kneel down, in all faith and earnestness, to 



DE PROFUNDIS. 


251 


implore the Lord who has condemned slaughter to ren¬ 
der their special slaughter efficacious. Both sets of com¬ 
batants seek to enlist the Lord on their side, believing, or 
rather unconsciously assuming, that He is altogether such 
a one as themselves; believing their cause to be just, 
they trust that He will favor it; fancying also, obviously, 
that, even though it be just, He may not favor it unless 
specially entreated to do so; assuming, too (unconsciously 
again), that He is mutable, impressible, persuadable, and 
can be worked upon by our prayers to do that which He 
would not have done without them; that is, either to 
take a different view of the case from that which He 
would otherwise have taken, or give victory to a cause 
which, though righteous, He would not otherwise have 
made to win ; to change sides in short. 

But the prayer of Armies to the Lord of Hosts is often 
far more than this, where it is fervent, and really expects 
to be efficacious or to weigh one iota of a grain in the 
scale of His eternal purposes. It is a bona fide petition, 
almost sublime in its unthinking naivete, that He will 
interpose to prevent the genius of the opposing generals, 
the sagacity and topographical knowledge and professional 
care and foresight of the opposing staff, and the organ¬ 
izing skill of the enemy’s minister of war, and the dry¬ 
ness of the enemy’s powder, and the excellence of the 
enemy’s artillery, and the superiority of the enemy’s 
numbers, from producing their natural, allotted, and 
legitimate results; and, further, that He will interfere 
to prevent the stupidity, cowardice, sluggishness of the 
suppliants, and the ineptitude and knavery of their 




ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


9*9 

/ chiefs, from reaping the fruits which a, righteous decree 
lias from all time assigned to turpitude and incapacity, 
( Viewed in this light, the prayer becomes something like 
l an insult. Viewed in any light, it is simply a request 
that the All-wise and All-mighty Euler of the Universe 
will work, not a miracle, but a series of miracles, will 
suspend the whole sequence of cause and effect on which 
the world depends and on which the actions of men are 
calculated, to meet a casual crisis in the affairs of one 
small section of His undeserving creatures. Even in 
those cases where all human sympathies go with the 
suppliants, where feeble but indisputable right is on 
the point of being crushed by overwhelming might, the 
prayer is still for a miraculous suspension of that per¬ 
vading law in virtue of which Might, which observes the 
conditions of success, reigns paramount on earth over 
Eight, which neglects or fails to fulfil them. In specify¬ 
ing these military prayers, we have taken the most start¬ 
ling case, and the one which admits of being most broadly 
. stated; but a thousand others are virtually as illogical, 
though not quite so revolting to human reason. 

Yet, in the common affairs of life, prayer — that is, a 
request for the aid of those wiser or more powerful than 
ourselves, and confident reliance on that aid — is our daily 
practice, and one of the means on the operation of which 
we most confidently count, and which we distinctly rec¬ 
ognize to be perfectly logical and sane. Why, then, is it 
permitted by philosophy to pray to man, and not to pray 
to God ? Why is it rational to entreat a tyrant to spare 




DE PROFUNDIS. 


253 


his victim, yet irrational to pray that God will incline 
that tyrant’s heart to spare him ? Why is it philosophical, 
when I am drowning, to beseech a fellow-student on the 
shore to fling a rope and save me, yet unphilosophical to 
pray to the Deity, equally present and immeasurably 
abler, to grant me such assistance ? Why, when I am 
sick unto death, may I send for a skilful physician to 
cure me secundum artem , yet may not expect Providence 
to heal me by a (far easier and simpler) word ? Clearly 
and solely, it would seem, because men are persuadable, 
and God is not; because, in the case where human aid is 
implored, the appeal is a vera causa ; it can make the ty¬ 
rant, the friend, or the physician do what otherwise lie 
would not have done. Take the last instance as the sim¬ 
plest one. Thus, — I am ill of a malady which, according 
to the unchecked operation of those natural and eternal 
laws which men have studied, and on which they base all 
their calculations, must prove fatal. I pray that the cup 
may pass from me, taking no other step, and God heals 
me. In this case, not only has a miracle been worked, 
but an entire derangement of the regular current course 
of events has been brought about (for one event cannot be 
changed without operating on all others); not only has 
all past analogy, by which men guide their actions, been 
set at naught and the laws of natural sequence suspended 
for my behoof, but as my recovery, when I ought to have 
died, will affect and modify the lot of every one connected 
with me in the remotest degree, the hearing of my prayer 
lias introduced an entirely new and endless range of con¬ 
sequent events, has negatived the Past and disturbed the 




254 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


Future. But once again, — I am ill of a fatal malady, 
curable only by one rare drug. I purchase it from a 
druggist, and I live. I pray a friend learned in the deeper 
secrets of chemistry to confide to me the hidden elixir; 
he does so, and I am saved. In all this there is no trans¬ 
gression or suspension of natural law, but simple conform¬ 
ity to it. It is in the course of nature that medicines 
heal; it is in the course of nature that friends listen and 
assist. The law of nature is, that if the medicine is not 
administered, I die; that if it is administered, I live ; that 
a friend, if a persuadable being, listens to my entreaties. 
In this case the prayer is a causa causans; it has so acted 
on the druggist or the friend as to make him do what oth¬ 
erwise he would not have done; he was so made as to be 
so acted upon; an antecedent which I applied has been 
followed by its appointed and natural sequence. This 
reasoning would seem sound. It is certainly in conform¬ 
ity with the instinctive and habitual convictions on which 
we act, and must act, in our daily life. 

If this reasoning is sound, it would seem to follow that 
the Catholic Church, in sanctioning the invocation of saints, 
has hit upon the one form of prayer which is logical and 
philosophic. Assuming the possibility of communication 
between the living and the spirits who have passed away 
from earth, and assuming further that those spirits, now 
- endowed with the knowledge and the power belonging to 
a higher life, still retain something of the affections and 
preferences of their former state, and favor and protect 
their votaries, then there is nothing irrational in calling 




DE PROFUNDIS. 


255 


upon them to aid and bless ns. They, though translated 
to supernal spheres, and gifted with larger faculties, are 
still supposed to he imperfect creatures, and not yet par¬ 
takers of the Divine Nature. They may, therefore, with¬ 
out irrationality, be supposed amenable to human entreat¬ 
ies and capable of being moved to exert their super-earthly 
powers for the benefit of those who adore and trust them. 
Praying to them is, in fact, just like praying to fellow- 
beings of a superior order, only still more gloriously en¬ 
dowed than any earthly friends, and still more advantage¬ 
ously placed for answering the claims of the suppliants. 

But again: Is the above reasoning quite without sus¬ 
picion of a flaw ? If, as philosophers have maintained, 
we all and always live under the dominion of settled law; 
if the present in all points flows regularly and inexorably 
from the past; if all occurrences are linked together in 
one unfailing chain of cause and effect, and all are fore¬ 
seen by Him whose foresight is unerring; if, indeed, they 
are mere portions of an order of events of which the mo¬ 
tive power has been set in action from the beginning; 
then is not aid rendered to us by our human friends in 
consequence of our entreaties, as an effect of that cause , as 
much a disturbance of the ordained Law of Sequence as 
if God himself had directly aided us in compliance with our 
prayers to Him ? In working out the prearranged order 
of the Universe, men surely are His agents just as much 
as winds and waves; to pray to Him to still the latter 
lest they overwhelm us, is admitted to be unphilosophical, 
as implying the expectation that a miracle, an interference 



256 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


with the laws of nature, should he worked on our behalf; 
to pray to Him to turn the hearts of cruel men lest they 
should slay us, is admitted to be equally, though less ob¬ 
viously, unphilosophic for the same reason. Yet would 
either result be more a disturbance of established sequences 
than our being spared or saved by human interposition, 
if that interposition be, really and truly, caused by our 
prayers, and would not have taken place without them ? 
Is it not the inescapable conclusion from all this ratioci¬ 
nation, that we are on these subjects dealing with ques¬ 
tions which either our imperfect logical instruments are 
inadequate to handle, or in which our premises are incom¬ 
plete or uncertain; and in reference to which, therefore, 
'all our reasoning processes land us in contradictions or 
inadmissibilities ? In fine, we are surrounded with mys¬ 
teries, our own origin and existence being the most obvi¬ 
ous of them all; mysteries we cannot clear up or escape 
from ; mysteries as to which, however, we have one plain 
duty, namely, since we cannot solve them, firmly to resist 
the temptation (which is the besetting sin of the undisci¬ 
plined religious mind) of acquiescing in the pretended 
solutions offered to us in such abundance by those to 
whom a state of doubt is a state of torture; who rebel- 
liously clamor for that certainty which, in moral ques¬ 
tions, Providence has vouchsafed only to negations; and 
who find it easier to worship a created Idol than an 
unknown God. 

Probably to every experienced as to every disciplined 
mind, the one effective silencer and discourager of prayer 




DE PKOFUNDIS. 


257 


is the conviction, which we all accept but can rarely real¬ 
ize, that we constantly pour forth our most fervent sup¬ 
plications for what not only we ought not to obtain, and 
for what it would not conduce to our well-being to obtain, 
but for what in a year or a month, perhaps, we may be 
most thankful we did not obtain, or most wretched if we 
did. To grant our prayers would, we well know, be often 
the greatest unkindness God could do us. We know so 
little what would make us happy, or what would do us 
good. If we saw a little truer, a little deeper, or a lit¬ 
tle further, we should pray to be delivered from the fate 
we are now passionately praying to attain, as from the 
worst of earthly evils. To pray for this or that blessing 
with the proviso, “if it be good for us,” is superfluous, for 
our creed is that God will always give His children what 
He sees to be good for them. To pray without this proviso 
may be, and often is, suicidally entreating for a curse. 
What blind work, then, prayer is ! unless confined to the 
simple, monotonous cry, “ Thy will be done ! ” And then 
as a Prayer how needless is that, though as a sentiment 
of trust and resignation, how needful! * In fine, perhaps 

* “ Still raise for good the supplicating voice, 

But leave to Heaven the measure and the choice ; 

Safe in His hands whose eye discerns afar 
The secret ambush of a specious prayer. 

Implore His aid ; in His decisions rest; 

Secure whate’er He gives, He gives the best. 

But when a sense of sacred Presence fires, 

And strong devotion to the skies aspires, 

Pour forth thy fervors for a healthful mind, 

Obedient passions, and a will resigned ; 

Q 



258 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


the only prayer that the wise can offer, confident that it 
would be well for us it should be heard, must be reduced 
to this: “ Guide us aright, and deliver us from evil ” ! 
Whatsoever is more than this cometh of a faulty judg¬ 
ment and a fainting will. 

For Love, which scarce collective Man can fill, 

For patience, sovereign o’er transmuted ill, 

For faith, that panting for a purer seat, 

Counts Death kind Nature’s signal for retreat, — 

These gifts for all the laws of heaven ordain, 

These gifts He grants who grants the power to gain ; 

With these celestial wisdom calms the mind, 

And makes the happiness she cannot find.” 

Johnson’s Vanity of Human Wishes. Paraphrased 
from the Tenth Satire of Juvenal. 



VII. 

ELSEWHERE 



4 



ELSEWHERE. 



^HE belief in a future world, in a prolonged or 


-L- renewed existence after death, is sincerely held by 
ninety-nine men out of every hundred among us, even in 
the educated classes, however unable they may be to give 


a reason for the faith that is in them, or even to say how 
they came by it. They may not realize this future, but 
they do not doubt it, and they would be surprised and 
shocked to hear it questioned. Yet ninety-nine out of 


every hundred habitually act and feel as if they had for¬ 


gotten the 7 doctrine, or had never entertained it. Why is 
this ? Why is it that the other world exercises so slight 
an influence, and lets in so faint a light, on this ? Why 
do the promises and menaces of the life to come operate 
so partially and languidly on the feelings and the actions 


of the life that is ? How is it that the attractions of 


Heaven compete at such a fearful disadvantage with those 


of Earth ? How is it that hopes and fears which come 
to us magnified through the dread telescope of Eternity 
are so feebly felt, in comparison with the trivial and 
♦transient interests of this “ narrow sand and shoal of 
Time ” ? We are 



262 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


“ Beings holding large discourse, 

Looking before and after ” ; 

the histories we read, the scenes we tread, the skies which 
nightly remind us of the illimitable wonders of Creation, 
all proclaim in language too clear to be misread, too elo¬ 
quent to be unheard, the infinite littleness and shortness 
of what is visible and earthly, and the infinite grandeur 
and superiority of what is enduring and divine; the earth 
is strewed with the ruins of things on which man had 
accumulated whatever could insure stability and perma¬ 
nence ; its surface is written all over with lessons of the 
transitoriness of all human interests and human works. 
Of the richest and mightiest cities of the ancient world 
the only surviving indications are the Temples and the 
Tombs : their dwellings, their palaces, their theatres, have 
disappeared,—all the magnificent structures of their genius 
and their pride, save those erected to the memory of the 
Dead, or the worship of the Undying ! “Passing away” 
is written on everything this world contains ; yet we sit 
amidst its consentaneous and emphatic teachings, unable 
to lay to heart its single moral, engrossed with the shal¬ 
low interests of a few brief moments in a passing life, 
with the immortal Stars above us, and the Sepulchres 
of Nations at our feet! We are all conscious of this 
startling disproportion between the relative magnitude of 
the two sets of objects and our relative absorption in 
them: how intent we are upon the one, how neglectful 
of the other ! Divines reproach our insensibility as a sin; 
and we ourselves acknowledge it with an alternate sigli 
of regret, and stare of half-incredulous wonder. Where, 



ELSEWHERE. 


263 


then, are we to look for the explanation of this strange 
irrationality ? Why are the joys of the world to come so 
feeble to attract, and its terrors so impotent to restrain ? 

Can it be attributable to unbelief? With some, no 
doubt, this is the principal operative cause. They have 
no real firm faith in futurity ; they admit it, but it dwells 
upon their mind in too nebulous a shape ever to attain to 
the dignity, or to bear the fruits, of a conviction. What 
they see and know, therefore, appeals to them with a 
cogency which can never appertain to what they merely 
conjecture. On what principles of sense or wisdom 
should they forego a pleasure that is immediate and cer¬ 
tain for a joy, even far greater, that is future, distant, and 
dim, if not problematical ? Between a certainty and a 
contingency the conflict is enormously unequal. But it 
is not of these men that we are speaking. There are 
thousands who fancy their belief in Heaven and its coun¬ 
terpart is positive, dogmatic, and established; over whose 
conviction no shade of doubt has ever passed; to whom 
(theoretically at least) the day of Judgment is as real as 
the grave, and the immortality of the Soul as certain as 
the death of the body; whose hopes are never dimmed by 
the clouds which haunt our hours of weakness and reac¬ 
tion ; whom no subtle questionings, no dark misgivings 
waylay and assail, to shatter and paralyze their energies; 
and yet upon whose actual sentiments, estimates, state 
of mind, and course of action, the beckoning effulgence 
from Heaven or the beacon-fire of Hell have scarce more 
influence than had upon the ancient world the chill and 
pallid moonlight of Elysium or the shadowy tortures of 


$ 


S 


$ 



264 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


the poetic Tartarus. It is not that they are not steadfast 
believers in these solemn futurities: if you question 
them, they would class them among the most absolute 
certainties they know. It is not that for a moment their 
reason places the pleasures or the pains of earth in com¬ 
parison with the incalculable retributions of another 
world, or that their nature is too uncultured to appre¬ 
ciate the immeasurable overbalance of an infinite rever¬ 
sion over a finite actuality. Some other explanation 
must be sought for. 

Can it be found in Man’s weak imagination, in the 
feebleness of his faculty of realization ? Is it that he 
cannot fully picture to himself, or bring home to his 
bosom, things so distant and unseen ? Is it that, fully 
admitting them, he cannot feel them ? that, though con¬ 
victions of ^the understandin 
realities to the heart ? No doubt, in a multitude of 
instances this is the true solution of the enigma. The 
conceptions of most of us are dull; the power of pre¬ 
senting the future to our minds (in the accurate and 
analyzed sense of the expression), of making it present 
to us, of “ seeing Him who is invisible,” is a faculty 
whose strength depends greatly on training, which is 
vouchsafed to different individuals in very different 
measure, and to most of us in very scanty measure. It 
is a faculty, even, which, in its complete development, is, 
as previously pointed out, a most perilous endowment, 
and probably scarcely compatible with sanity. Eventu¬ 
alities, too, however certain, of which both the time and 
the locality are unknown, and of which the nature is not 


g, they have not become 



ELSEWHERE. 


265 


easily conceivable, can seldom take a hold proportioned to 
their magnitude upon minds blunted by living in a world 
of sense and daily dealing with objective realities alone. 

With the vast majority of nominal believers, no doubt, 
the future is ineffective by reason of its distance, the 
present overpowering by reason of its nearness. Their 
will is too feeble, their powers of self-control too little 
raised above the savage state, to postpone a present in¬ 
dulgence to a future good, to dread a distant agony more 
than an immediate pang, to forego an actual trifle for a 
grand reversion. These are the men who sink into luxury 
and sloth from sheer inability to look forward till the 
morrow and provide against need, who do evil “ because 
sentence against it is not executed speedily.” But there 
are millions to whom this explanation will not apply; 
who spend their life in sowing the seed for a remote 
harvest; who practise daily self-denial for the purchase of 
some contingent and eventual good; whose whole career 
is a laborious provision for an earthly morrow quite as 
distant and far more uncertain than the heavenly one. 

1/ 

They sacrifice themselves for a posthumous fame which 
will not be theirs ; they lay by comforts for an old age 
which in all likelihood they will never reach; they accu¬ 
mulate, by the surrender of all the enjoyments and amen¬ 
ities of life, a splendid endowment for the family they 
hope to found: yet their sons may all die out before 
them. Here it is, not that they cannot sacrifice the 
actual and visible to the remote and the unseen, but 
that the locality and the elements of their future are 

alike misjudged. 

12 



266 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


None of these solutions of the problem quite explain 
to us how it is that men who are capable of a strenuous 
and self-denying postponement of the present to the 
future, and who are solemn and earnest believers in the 
Great Hope and the. tremendous Pear, yet, practically 
and habitually, look upon Heaven with so little aspira¬ 
tion and upon Hell with so little dread. We must seek 
for some other influence which is at work to counteract 
the natural- operation of these mighty conceptions. This 
influence we believe will be found in the character of the 
usual representations of the happiness and torments of 
our future retributive existence. The joys of the world 
to come have been habitually so pictured by divines that 
the great majority cannot relish them, and its pains so 
that they cannot believe them. 

In describing these last, it must be admitted that 
divines have seldom diverged much from the letter of 
Scripture. The Scriptural delineations of future torments 
have four characteristics, all singular enough : they are all 
physical; they are eternal; they are penal, not purgato¬ 
rial or reformatory; and they are indiscriminate on all 
subjected to them. Now, every one of these points is 
found to be practically almost impossible of credence. 

I. It is worthy of notice that throughout the Epistles 
there is no description of any place or world of punish¬ 
ment, and few references to the existence of such. Paul 
indeed speaks of the “ day of wrath ” ; “ the wrath to 
come”; “indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, 
upon every soul of man that doetli evil ” ; and both Paul 
and the writer of the second epistle of Peter mention 



ELSEWHERE. 


267 


incidentally the “ everlasting destruction/’ the “ perish¬ 
ing ” of sinners ; but this is the sum total of their con¬ 
tributions to the subject, which seems scarcely ever to 
have been present to their minds. In the Gospels, how¬ 
ever, the place of punishment is mentioned in several 
places, generally as from Christ himself; and it is always 
described in the same or nearly the same language, as 
“ hell fire ” ; “ flame ” ; “ the place where the worm dietli 
not, and the fire is not quenched ” ; “a furnace of fire,” — 
imagery suggested apparently by the neighborhood of the 
Valley of Gehenna. In the Revelations the same concep¬ 
tion is (as might be anticipated from the character of the 
book) still more materialized: there it is “ the lake that 
burneth with fire and brimstone ” ; the “ lake of fire ” ; 
the “ bottomless pit,” etc. In short, wherever Hell is 
spoken of at all specifically in the Bible, its tortures are 
described as purely corporeal; and Christian writers and 
preachers in general have faithfully adhered to the repre¬ 
sentations of their text.* 


* I am assured that these material conceptions of the place of 
punishment are not now retained or dwelt upon by any one. Yet I 
have now lying before me a book entitled ’‘A Sight of Hell, pro- 
fessiiw to come from the Rev. Father Furniss, C.SS.R., and printed 

O 

“ permissu superiorum,” and recommended to be used along with 
the Catechism in Sunday schools as part of a course of religious 
instruction. It is one of a series of u books for children and young 
persons.” 

“ Little child, if you go to hell there will be a devil at your side 
to strike you. He will go on striking you every minute for ever and 
ever without stopping. The first stroke will make your body as 
bad as the body of Job, covered from head to foot with sores and 




268 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


Now, it is naturally impossible for men of intelligence 
and cultivation who are conscious how far the mental 
surpasses the bodily capacity for suffering — or for Chris¬ 
tians who have been taught how large a proportion of 
their worst offences proceed, not from the weakness of the 
flesh, but from the wild, bad passions of the Spirit — to 
acquiesce in this physical delineation of future retribu¬ 
tion. Instead of the “ majestic pains ” adapted to man’s 
complex nature, and capable of such -impressive delinea¬ 
tion, the torments assigned by ordinary Christianity to 
the future life are peculiarly and exclusively those appro¬ 
priate to this; they are all bodily; yet the body is laid 
down at death. They are all corporeal; yet we are told 

ulcers. The second stroke will make your body twice as bad as the 
body of Job. The third stroke will make your body three times 
as bad as the body of Job. The fourth stroke will make your body 
four times as bad as the body of Job. How, then, will your body 
be after the devil has been striking it every moment for a hundred 
millions of years without stopping ? ” 

Next comes “ A Dress of Fire ” : — 

“Job xxxviii. — Are not thy garments hot? Come into this 
room. You see it is very small. But see in the midst of it there is 
a girl, perhaps about eighteen years old. What a terrible dress she 
has on, — her dress is made of fire ! On her head she wears a bon¬ 
net of fire. It is pressed down all over her head ; it burns her head ; 
it burns into the skin ; it scorches the bone of the skull and makes 
it smoke. The red-hot, fiery heat goes into the brain and melts it. 
Ezek. xxii. — I will burn you in the fire of my wrath ; you shall be 
melted in the midst thereof as silver is melted in the fire. You do 
not, perhaps, like a headache. Think what a headache that girl 
must have. But see more. She is wrapped up in flames, for her 
frock is on fire. If she were on earth she would be burned to a cin- 





ELSEWHERE. 


269 


that our coming existence is a spiritual one. They are 
prepared for and addressed to our senseless clay, which is 
mouldering in the tomb, dissolving into its original ele- 
ments, and perpetually passing into new combinations. 
The necessary counterpart and correlative of the scriptural 
doctrine of a material Hell, without which it has no 
meaning or coherence, is the doctrine of the Resurrection 
of the body, which Bush, in his “ Anastasis,” has shown 
to be neither tenable nor scriptural. It is impossible for 
those who believe, as we are taught to do, in the immate¬ 
riality of the Soul, in the spiritual and incorporeal nature 
of our future existence, to accept the doctrine of future 
torments applicable solely to our fleshly forms, and in- 

der in a moment. But she is in hell, where fire burns everything, 
but burns nothing away. There she stands burning and scorched ; 
there she will stand forever burning and scorched. She counts 
with her fingers the moments as they pass away slowly, for each 
moment seems to her like a hundred years. As she counts the 
moments she remembers that she will have to count them fur ever 
and ever.” 

The children are then favored with the sight of a boiling boy : — 
“ But, listen ! there is a sound just like that of a kettle boiling. Is 
it really a kettlg which is boiling 1 No. Then what is it ? Hear 
what it is. The blood is boiling in the scalded veins of that boy. 
The brain is boiling and bubbling in his head. The marrow is 
boiling in his bones.” 

They also have a peep at a baby in a red-hot oven : “ Hear how 
it screams to come out ! See how it turns and twists itself about 
in the fire ! It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It 
stamps -its little feet on the floor of the oven. You can see on the 
face of this little child what you see on the faces of all in hell, — 
despair, desperate and horrible.” 



270 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


flicted by physical elements which can have no power 
over disembodied spirits. If the place of retribution be 
in truth a burning lake, and the agents of suffering be 
the worm and flame, then “ flesh and blood ” must be the 
inheritors of Hell, if not of the Kingdom of Heaven ; 
and our earthly frames must be re-collected, re-formed and 
re-animated at the last day for the special purpose of the 
penal fire. It may be urged that we do not know what 
God may do; that we have no right to assume that our 
next existence will be either an incorporeal one, or one 
of such “ spiritual corporeity ” as will be impassible to 
flame; that God may either re-create our flesh, or endow 
fire and brimstone with power over our disembodied 
essence : possibly; • what I affirm is simply this, that 
those who described Hell as it is described in the Rev¬ 
elations and in the language of Divines, did so with 
reference to our mortal frames; and that the manifest 
and felt incongruity between the <rd>na irveofiarLKov 
and tortures adapted to the aw/ia ^tu^lkov, — between 
an immaterial world, an existence of the Soul, a spiritual 
essence, and a lake of brimstone, a devouring flame, and 
a gnawing worm, — disarms the latter of all their reality 
and all their terrors. It may be that in using these ex¬ 
pressions, as in so many other instances, the Scriptural 
Writers spoke metaphorically,' and employed such lan¬ 
guage as would best awaken the dismay of auditors 
whose merely animal nature could realize animal suffer¬ 
ing only, and who were incapable of soaring to the con¬ 
ception of an incorporeal existence. But why then do 
divines persist in repeating metaphors so singularly inap- 



ELSEWHERE. 


271 


propriate, and in using the same earthly images when 
addressing auditors whom at the same time they teach to 
regard futurity as an unearthly state ? 

II. The alleged eternity of future punishments has con¬ 
tributed in an incalculable degree to prevent the practical 
belief and realization of those punishments. The common 
feelings of humanity and the common sentiments of justice, 
which lie deep at the heart of our nature, have, in this 
instance, proved too strong for the reiterated assertions ol 
orthodoxy, and have steadily refused to accept so terrible 
a tenet. Yet still, with a curiosa inf elicit as which is al¬ 
most stupidity, the Church * still preaches the endless 
duration of future torments almost as confidently as the 
existence of those torments. The inevitable consequence 
is that the general and instinctive rejection of the one 
tenet entails scepticism with regard to the other with 
which it is thus persistently bound up. ETo subtlety of 
logic, no weight of authority, will induce rightly consti¬ 
tuted minds, which allow themselves to reason at all, to 
admit that the sins or failings of Time can merit the 
retribution of Eternity, — that finite natures can, by any 
guilt of which they are capable, draw upon themselves 
torments infinite either in essence or duration. Divines 
tell us — and we all accept the saying — that no virtue 
on the part of frail and feeble creatures like ourselves can 

* Scarcely, perhaps. The Church ; but still the self-styled ortho¬ 
dox, the oi 7roXXoi of the clergy. High authorities among them, 
however, are beginning to proclaim the doctrine to be as unscriptural 
as it is revolting. See, inter alia , a Paper by “ Anglicanus,” in the 
“Contemporary Review ” for May, 1872. 



272 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


merit an eternal Heaven ; but when they demand our 
assent to the opposite and contradictory assertion that the 
shortcomings and backslidings of the same creatures can 
and do merit an everlasting Hell, we are revolted by the 
inconsistency, and shrink back from the corollary involved 
in the latter proposition. 

III. Another point particularly difficult of belief and 
realization in the popular doctrine of the sufferings of a 
future world, is, that they are represented as penal, not 
purgatorial, — retributive, not reformatory. It is not easy 
to conceive any object to be answered, any part in the 
great plan of Providence to be fulfilled, by the infliction of 
torments, whether temporary or perpetual, which are neither 
to serve for the purification of those who endure them, nor 
needed for the warning of those who behold them, since 
the inhabitants of earth do not see them, and the trans¬ 
lated denizens of Heaven do not require them. They are 
simply aimless and retrospective. It is true that, in the 
conception of the philosopher, they are inevitable; that 
future suffering is the natural offspring and necessary 
consequence of present sin: but this is not the view of 
the doctrine we are considering, nor is the character of the 
sufferings it depicts such as would logically flow out of 
the sins for which they are supposed to be a chastisement. 
The Catholic Church, with its usual profound knowledge 
of human nature, and ready system of providing for every 
want and guarding against every objection, has invented 
purgatory ; and by this means lias undoubtedly succeeded 
in making the belief in and realization of a Hell possible, 
to say the least. We may well admit, as Catholics are 



ELSEWHERE. 


27:3 


called upon to *do, that inflictions more severe, pangs more 
searching and more lasting, may he needed and provided 
in a future world for those whose malignant passions 
°r obstinate carnality the milder chastisements of earth 
failed to purge away, or who, by the unaccountable arrange¬ 
ments of Providence, escaped tribulation'almost or alto¬ 
gether here. But to believe, as Protestants are required 
to do, that all these fiercer torments will be inflicted when 
no conceivable purpose is to be answered by their infliction, 
when the suffering, so far as human imagination can fathom 
the case, is simply gratuitous, is assuredly a far harder 
strain upon our faith, — a strain, too, which is hardest on 
those whose feelings are the most humane, and whose 
notions of the Deity are worthiest; on those, that is, who 
have most fully imbibed Christ’s sentiments and views. 

IY. As if bent upon surrounding their doctrine of future 
punishments with everything that could make it thorny 
and repellent, Protestant Divines usually assume these 
punishments to be indiscriminate upon all who are con¬ 
demned to them. Even the text distinguishing between 
the many stripes to be awarded to him who sinned know¬ 
ingly and wilfully, and the few r stripes to be inflicted on 
him wdio sinned ignorantly, and therefore did not really 
sin at all, is rarely referred to. Following literally and 
unintelligently the metaphor of the sheep and the goats, — 
the right hand and the left hand of the coming Judge,— 
Heaven and Hell, in their current language, are two states, 
with no margin for mediocrity, no debatable or border 
land between them for those wdio deserve neither, or whose 
merits are so nearly alike that it is scarcely possible to say 

12 * 


R 






274 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


which deserve which ; but, on the contraly, with a great 
gulf, a broad, bold line of demarcation, separating, 
through all future ages and by boundless distances, those 
whose measure of sin or virtue while on earth was scarce¬ 
ly distinguishable by the finest and most delicate moral 
electrometer.* On one side is endless happiness — the 
sight of God, 

“ That perfect presence of His face 
Which we, for want of words, call Heaven ”— 

for those whom one frailty more, one added weakness, one 
hair’s-breadth further transgression, would have justly 
condemned to dwell forever “ with the Devil and his 
Angels,” an outcast from Hope, chained to his iniquity 
forever, alone with the irreparable! On the other side is 
Hell, the scene of torture, of weeping, and gnashing of 
teetli; of the ceaseless flame and the undying worm; 
where he “ that is filthy must be filthy still ” ; torment, 
not for a period, but forever, for him for whom one effort 
more, one ounce of guilt the less, might have turned the 
trembling balance, and opened the gates of an eternal 
paradise ! Human feeling and human reason cannot be¬ 
lieve this, though they may admit it with lip assent; and 
the Catholic Church, accordingly, here as elsewhere, steps 
in to present them with the via media which is needed. 
Purgatory, ranging from a single day to a century of ages, 
offers that border land of discriminating retribution for 

* Nay, far worse ; often those who differed here only in their 
theological opinions, — their reception or rejection of some unintel¬ 
ligible dogma. 

O O 




ELSEWHERE. 


275 


which justice and humanity cry out. For the best of us 
have some frailty, some dark stain, which requires to be 
purged away before we can be fit for admission into a 
world of perfect purity and love ; and the worst of us are 
conscious of loads of impurity and guilt which, compared 
with the faults of those sisters or brethren of our race who 
are “ a little lower than the angels,” are as a thousand 
years to a single day. 

Yet though Theologians have virtually all but de¬ 
stroyed popular faith in the conventional place of pun¬ 
ishment by the language in which they have habitually 
described it, and the incredibilities with which they have 
mixed it up, surely, surely it is not impossible to imagine 
a future world of retribution in such form and coloring 
as shall be easy and natural to realize, as shall be, not 
only possible to believe, but impossible to disbelieve ; a 
world of which we shall feel that, if it exist at all, it must 
be such as w r e delineate. If the soul is destined for an 
existence after death, then (unless a miracle is worked to 
prevent it) that existence must be one of retribution to 
the sinful, and of purgatorial suffering to the frail and 
feeble, soul. The nature of the retribution will be deter¬ 
mined by the nature of the sin; and the character of the 
purifying fires will be indicated by the character of the 
frailty which has to be purged away. 

When the portals of this world have been passed, when 
time and sense have been left behind, and this “ body of 
death ” lias dropped away from the liberated soul, every¬ 
thing which clouded the perceptions, which dulled the 






ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


of 1 7 r* 

z7b 

vision, which drugged the conscience, while on earth, will 
he cleared off like a morning mist. We shall see all things 
as they really are, — ourselves and our sins among the 
number. No other punishment, whether retributive or 
purgatorial, will be needed. Naked truth, unfilmed eyes, 
will do all that the most righteous vengeance could de¬ 
sire. Every now and then we have a glimpse of such 
perceptions while on earth. Times come to all of us 
when the passions, by some casual influence or some 
sobering shock, have been wdiolly lulled to rest, when all 
disordered emotions have drunk repose 

“ From the cool cisterns of the midnight air,” 

and when, for a few brief and ineffectual instants, the 
temptations which have led us astray, the pleasures for 
which we have bartered away the future, the desires to 
which we have sacrificed our peace, appear to us in all 
their wretched folly and miserable meanness. From our 
feelings then we may form a faint imagination of what 
our feelings will be hereafter, when this occasional and 
imperfect glimpse shall have become a perpetual flood of 
light, irradiating all the darkest places of our earthly 
pathway, piercing through all veils, scattering all delu¬ 
sions, burning up all sophistries; when the sensual man, 
all desires and appetites now utterly extinct, shall stand 
amazed and horror-struck at the low promptings to which 
he once yielded himself up in such ignominious slavery, 
and shall shrink in loathing and shame from the reflected 
image of his own animal brutality; when the hard, grasp¬ 
ing, sordid man, come now into a world where wealth can 


S 




ELSEWHERE. 


977 

—J < i 


purchase nothing , where gold has no splendor and luxury 
no meaning , shall he almost unable to comprehend how 
he could ever have so valued such unreal goods; when 
the malignant, the passionate, the cruel man, everything 
which called forth his vices now swept away ivith the former 
existence , shall appear to himself as he appeared to others 
upon earth, shall hate himself as others hated him on 
earth. We shall see, judge, feel about all things there 
perfectly and constantly, as we saw, judged, and felt 
about them partially in our rare better and saner mo¬ 
ments here. We shall think that we must have been 
mad, if we did not too well know that we had been wil¬ 
ful. Every urgent appetite, every boiling passion, every 
wild ambition, which obscured and confused our reason 
here below will have been burnt away in the valley of 

1 

the shadow of death ; every subtle sophistry with which 
we blinded or excused ourselves on earth will have 
vanished before the clear glance of a disembodied 
spirit; nothing will intervene between us and the truth. 
Stripped of all the disguising drapery of honeyed words 
and false refractions, we shall see ourselves as we are; 
we shall judge ourselves as God has always judged us. 
Our lost or misused opportunities ; our forfeited birth¬ 
right ; our glorious possibility, ineffable in* its glory; 
our awful actuality, ineffable in its awfulness; the 
nature which God gave us, — the nature we have made 
ourselves ; the destiny for which He designed us, — the 
destiny to which we have doomed ourselves : all these 
things will grow and fasten on our thoughts, till the con¬ 
templation must terminate in madness, were not madness 



’S 278 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


a mercy belonging to the world of flesh alone. In the 
mere superior mental capacities, therefore, consequent 
upon spiritual life, we cannot fail to find all that is 
needed, or can be pictured, to make that life a penal and 
a purgatorial one. 

But there will be more than this. We shall find, in 
the same suffering and remorseful world, those whose 
emancipation we would now purchase at any cost, had 
we anything wherewith to buy it; those whose nurture 
we neglected, those whose temper we soured, those whose 
passions we aroused, those whose reason we perverted, 
those whose conscience we confused and stupefied, — 
those, in a word, for whose ruin we are answerable. We 
shall have to bear their despairing misery, their upbraiding 
looks; worse than all, we shall have to bear, here again, 
our own 'present perception of our Past. 

But there is yet another retributive pang in wait for the 
sinful soul, which belongs to the very nature of that future 
world, namely, the severance from all those we love who 
on earth have trod the narrower and better path. The 
affections do not belong to the virtuous alone ; they cling 
to the sinner through all the storms and labyrinths of sin ; 
they are the last fragments of what is good in him that he 
silences or lays aside or tramples out; they belong, not to 
the flesh, but to the spirit; and a spiritual existence, even 
if a suffering one, will but give them fresh energy and 
tenacity, by terminating all that has been antagonistic to 
them here below. Who shall describe the yearning love 
of a disencumbered soul ? Who can adequately conceive 
the passionate tenderness with which it will cling round 




ELSEWHERE. 


279 


the objects of its affection in a world where every other 
sentiment or thought is one of pain ? Yet what can be 
more certain, because what more in the essential nature of 
things, than that the great revelation of the Last Day (or 
that which must attend and be involved in the mere en¬ 
trance into the Spiritual State) will effect a severance of 
souls, — an instantaneous gulf of demarcation between the 
pure and the impure, the just and the unjust, the merciful 
and the cruel, — immeasurably more deep, essential, and 
impassable than any which time or distance or rank or 
antipathy could effect on earth. Here we never see into 
each other’s souls: * characters the most opposite and in¬ 
compatible dwell together upon earth, and may love each 

% 

other much, unsuspicious of the utter want of fundamental 
harmony between them. The aspiring and the worldly 
may have so much in common and may both instinctively 
conceal so much, that their inherent and elemental differ¬ 
ences may go undiscovered to the grave. The soul that 
will be saved and the soul that will be lost may cling 
round each other here with wild affection, all unconscious 
of the infinite divergence of their future destiny. The 
mother will love her son with all the devotion of her 11a- 

* “We live together years and years, 

And leave unsounded still 
Each other’s springs of hopes and fears, 

Each other’s depths of will. 

We live together day by day, 

And some chance look or tone 
Lights up with instantaneous ray 
An inner world unknown.” 


R. M. Milnes. 




280 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


ture, iii spite or in ignorance of his nnworthiness; that 
son may reciprocate his mother’s love, and in this only be 
not unworthy: the blindness which is kindly given us 
hides so much,* and affection covers such a multitude of 
sins. The pure and holy wife and the frail and sinful 
husband can live together harmoniously and can love 
fondly here below, because the vast moral gulf between 
them is mercifully veiled from either eye. But when the 
great curtain of ignorance and deception shall be with¬ 
drawn, “ when the secrets of all hearts shall be made 
known,” when the piercing light of the Spiritual World 
shall at once and forever disperse those clouds which have 
hidden what we really are from those who have loved us 
and almost from ourselves, when the trusting confidence 
of friendship shall discover what a serpent has been nour¬ 
ished in its bosom, when the yearning mother shall per¬ 
ceive on what a guilty wretch all her boundless and 
priceless tenderness has been lavished, when the wife 
shall at length see the husband whom she cherished 

* “ Or what if Heaven for once its searching: light 
Lent to some partial eye, disclosing all 
The rude, had thoughts that in our bosom’s night 
Wander at large, nor heed Love’s gentle thrall ? 

“ Who would not shun the dreary, uncouth place, 

As if, fond leaning where her infant slept, 

A mother’s arm a serpent should embrace : — 

So might we friendless live, and die unwept. 

“ Then keep the softening veil in mercy drawn, 

Thou who canst love us though Thou read us true.” 

Keble’s Christian Year. 



ELSEWHERE. 


281 


through long years of self-denying and believing love re¬ 
vealed in his true colors, a wholly alien creature, — what a 
sudden, convulsive, inevitable, because natural, separation 
between the clean and the unclean will then take place! 
The gulf which has always existed is recognized and felt at 
last; corruption can no longer consort with incorruption ; 
the lion cannot lie down with the lamb, nor the leopard 
with the kid. One flash of light has done it all. The 
merciful delusions which held friends together upon earth 
are dispersed, and the laws of the mind must take their 
course and divide the evil from the good. But though the 
link is severed, the affection is not thereby destroyed. The 
friend, the husband, the lover, the son, thus cut adrift by 
a just and natural though bitter retribution, love still ; nay, 
they love all the more fervently, all the more yearningly, 
in that they now discern with unclouded vision all that 
bright beauty, all that rich nature of the objects of their 
tenderness, of which their dim eyesight could on earth 
perceive only a part. Then will begin a retribution in¬ 
deed, the appropriate anguish, the desolate abandonment 
of which, who can paint, and who will be able to bear! 
To see those we love, as we never loved till then, turn from 
our grasp and our glance of clasping and supplicating 
fondness with that unconquerable loathing which virtue 
mast feel towards guilt and with which purity must shrink 
from stain; to see those eyes, never turned on us before 
save in gentleness and trust, now giving us one last glance 
of divine sadness and ineffable farewell; to watch those 
forms, whose companionship cheered and illuminated all 
the dark places of our earthly pilgrimage, and once and 




282- 


enigmas OF LIFE. 


again had almost redeemed us from the bondage and the 
mire of sin, receding, vanishing, melting in the bright dis- 
7 tance, to join a circle where they will need us not , to tread 
a path to which ours bears no parallel and can make no 
approach ; and then to turn inward and downward, and 
realize our lot, and feel our desolation, and reflect that we 
have earned it: what has Poetry or Theology pictured 
• • that can compete with a Gehenna such as this! 


Divines have been nearly as unfortunate and as far 
/ from reality in their delineations of the joys of Heaven 
as of the pains of Hell. The conception formed by one 
mind, and that one a peculiar, narrow, and abnormal 
mind, of a state of bliss has been stereotyped, and called 
Heaven. The picture which excited and engrossed the 
fancy of the author of the Book of Revelations has been 
thrust upon all other men, however diversely constituted, 
as “ the Heaven of the Bible,” the Paradise of God, the 
place which Christ “ was gone to prepare for us.” It was 
to be a scene of gorgeous splendor and of ceaseless wor¬ 
ship. Those who did not relish or earnestly desire such 
a life, those whose imaginations were not kindled into 
transport at the picture, or who ventured to form a differ¬ 
ent conception of supernal bliss from that which floated 
before the visions of the elect, were held to show a carnal 
and unregenerate nature which could have neither part 
nor lot in so sublime a world. It is true that more 
human divines spoke of reunion with the loved, as well 
as of admission to the throne of the Most High, of the 




ELSEWHERE. 


283 


companionship of kindred and friends, as well as of “ the 
presence of the power of God,” and of perpetual praise 
and prayer. But this was regarded as a concession; it 
was scarcely rigid orthodoxy; it was undeniably not the 
most prominent feature of “ the glory to he revealed ” ; 
it lay in the background of all the splendid and sublime 
imagery of St. John. Those poor human souls who felt 
almost justified by the language of their Master in loving 
their brother whom they had seen more than God whom 
they had not seen, and who felt that, whether justified or 
not, they did so and could not help doing so, were scowled 
away from the Gate of the Eternal City. Worship was 
to be the sole need, occupation, joy, of the beatific state. 
What wonder that the humble, the unimaginative, the 
tender, the human, felt no yearnings towards the cold, 
strange, pallid unreality ! 

It is not to be denied that the favorite delineations of 
Heaven are almost wholly suggested or colored by the 
Book of Bevelations, in which the descriptions, magnifi¬ 
cently splendid and sometimes sublime, are yet, if we 
except seven verses of the twenty-first chapter, almost 
wholly material. And not only so, but the material 
elements are by no means the noblest that might have 
been chosen. The Hew Jerusalem is painted as some¬ 
thing between a gorgeous palace, and a dazzling conventi¬ 
cle. The picture is of a city, — of thrones of sapphire, 
and crowns of gold ; of rainbows of emerald ; of walls 
and pavements of jasper and topaz and amethyst and chal¬ 
cedony ; of streets of glass and gates of pearl: brilliant 
ingredients, no doubt, to an Oriental imagination, but 





284 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


“ Poor fragments all of this low earth, 

Such as in dreams could hardly soothe 
A soul that once had tasted of immortal truth.” 

The writer’s conception of what befitted the Temple of 
the Lord and the dwelling of the redeemed embraced 
rather the rare curiosities than the common loveliness of 
nature: palaces and jewels and precious stones,-—not 
gentle streams and shady groves and woodland glades and 
sunny valleys and eternal mountains and the far-off mur¬ 
mur of a peaceful ocean. His Heaven was a scene of mag¬ 
nificent ornamentation rather than of solemn beauty; of 
glory, not of love and bliss. It might kindle his fancy : it 
chills ours. Even our material paradise would be differ¬ 
ently pictured. There may be all these things in Heaven ; 
but there will be what will throw all these accessaries into 
the shade. “ There may be crowns of material splendor ; 
there may be trees of unfading loveliness ; there may be 
pavements of emerald; and canopies of the brightest 
radiance; and gardens of deep and tranquil security; 
and palaces of proud and stately decoration; and a city 
of lofty pinnacles, through which there unceasingly flows 
a river of gladness, and where jubilee is ever rung by a 
concord of seraphic voices. But these are only the ac¬ 
cessaries of Heaven. They form not the materials of its 
substantial loveliness. Of this, the man who toils in 
humble drudgery, an utter stranger to the delights of 
sensible pleasure, or the fascinations of sensible glory, 
has already got a foretaste in his heart. It consists not 
in the enjoyment of created good, nor in the survey of 
created magnificence. It is drawn in a direct stream 





ELSEWHERE. 


OOK 

ZoO 

through, the channels of love and contemplation from the 
fulness of the Creator. It emanates from the counte¬ 
nance of God, manifesting the spiritual glories of his holy 
and perfect character on those whose characters are kin¬ 
dred to his own. And if on earth there is no tendency 
towards such a character, no process of restoration to the 
lost image of the Godhead, no delight in prayer, no relish 
for the sweets of intercourse with the Father now unseen 
but then to be revealed, — then, let our imaginations 
kindle as they may at the beatitudes of our fictitious 
Heaven, the true Heaven is what we shall never reach, 
because it is a Heaven we are not fitted to enjoy.” * 

The most repellent mistake of Divines in their delinea¬ 
tions of Heaven has perhaps been the uniformity they 
have attributed to its beatitudes. Men in this life ex¬ 
hibit infinite varieties of character, craving, and capacity; 
and all this within the limits of virtuous desire and of 
righteous effort. We see individuals here, differing from 
each other in almost every taste and sentiment, in the 
characters they specially admire, in the objects they most 
strenuously aim at, — of whom, nevertheless, we cannot 
pronounce that one is a more faithful servant of duty, or 
likely to be more acceptable to God than another. There 
are good men of every phase and peculiarity of goodness; 
there are ardent and unwearied “ fellow-laborers witli 
God ” in every corner of the vineyard, — in all the 
countless departments of His infinitely varied husbandry. 
There are those whom God sanctifies for the patient en- 


* Dr. Chalmers. 





286 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


durance of His heaviest will. There are those whom he 
energizes for rough duties of conflict or of toil, — of 
daring strife or plodding drudgery. There are those 
“ who serve, yet only stand and wait.” There are those 
whom he softens and purifies that they may radiate love 
and serenity around them. There are those, finally, whom 
He has set apart to glorify and serve him by the discov¬ 
ery of truth and the diffusion of knowledge. The variety 
which we observe among the candidates for Heaven here 
below belongs, then, to human nature, not to fallen na¬ 
ture ; it inheres, not in our imperfections, but in our 
incompleteness; it exists in us, not because we are earthly 
and sinful, but because we are men and not angels, — 

because, in a word, we are that peculiar modification of 

* 

sentient and intelligent existences which it has pleased 
the Creator to make us, and no other. 

If this were not so; if God had made us all in one 
mould, so that we differed from one another only as we 
were more or less frail and guilty; if there were some 
one ideal standard, divergence from which by special 
development in one direction or another were in itself a 
lapse from good; if unmurmuring submission, if stern 
resistance to evil, if daring and aggressive energy, if 
overflowing and all-embracing love, must each abnegate 
its peculiarity and put on its opposite, before it could do 
God’s work or obtain his smile; if the stern soldier of 
duty must become the melting child of tenderness and 
pity; if, in fine, God meant mankind to be a regiment in 
uniform, not a hierarchy of Servants, each with his special 
mission and his special capacity to perform it, and senti- 




ELSEWHERE. 


287 


ments and characteristics in conformity therewith ; — then 
there might be some ground for the idea that Death will 
be a process of mental and moral assimilation, and that, 
as they enter the immortal state, God will pass a ilatten- 
ing-iron over all who “ shall be found worthy to attain 
to the resurrection of the Just,” and smooth out every 
salient individuality whether of capacity or aspiration. 
But who that contemplates the varied forms of human 
excellence, all sanctioned by Divine approval, can find 
either probability or comfort in so strange a doctrine ? 
“ In my Father’s House are many mansions.” 

If, then, we are to preserve our essential identity in 
thatf other world, — and on what other supposition can 
w r e even conceive or desire a future existence ? — indi¬ 
viduals must be marked by divergencies analogous to 
those which have prevailed on earth. With a purged 
vision and a spiritualized being, those exclusive and dis¬ 
proportionate estimates which so aggravate and perpetu¬ 
ate discrepancies of aim and character below, will of 
course be corrected; but that the active and energetic 
spirit should at once become contemplative, that the 
earnest inquirer after truth should at once merge into 
the worshipper, or that she whose soul was love should 
suddenly become the Seraph searching after knowledge, 

■— these are metamorphoses which have no analogy with 
what we know of the Divine action, and which w T e can 
see no reason wdiatever to anticipate. The nature which 
God bestowed has an individual stamp and character 
which belongs to it, and cannot be separated from it. Its 
errors may be corrected, its exuberances pared away, its 




288 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


deficiencies supplied, and its scope enlarged, but it will 
remain a distinctive and integral existence, through 
Eternity, as in Time. 

If this be so, then the spiritual world cannot be the 
state of uniform and monotonous existence which ortho¬ 
doxy paints it. What divines have done for themselves, 
let each of us do for ourselves. They have drawn Heaven 
as they fancy they ought to desire it; let us picture it 
such as we imagine it may be, as far as faint human 
words can go. In doing this we shall be putting aside in 
favor of our own dim taper no superior light or knowl¬ 
edge which has been bequeathed to us; for with the 
exception of the Apocalypse (which we may put aside 

/A —_- 

with as little scruple as Luther did), one of the most 
noticeable peculiarities of the Scripture references to 
heaven is their vagueness and reserve: they tie up and 
chill our aspirations by no definite chart or picture of that 
future world ; the canvas only is given us; we may paint 
upon it nearly what we please. 

For, be it remembered, what is promised to us, or what 
we are permitted to anticipate, is a state of existence 
which will he Heaven to us ; not one which, though it may 
be a beatific vision to our differently constituted neigh¬ 
bors, would seem a dreary desert to ourselves. For 
example, to me God has promised, not the heaven of the 
ascetic temper, or the dogmatic theologian, or of the 
subtle mystic, or of the stern martyr ready alike to inflict 
and bear, but a heaven of purified and permanent affec¬ 
tions ; of a book of knowledge with eternal leaves, and 
unbounded capacities to read it; of those we love ever 




ELSEWHERE. 


289 


round us, never misconceiving us, or being harassed by 
us ; of glorious work to do, and adequate faculties to do 
it; a world of solved problems, as well as of realized 
ideals. The many mansions in my Father’s House are 
many, not in number only, but in variety. Our allotted 
mansion will have been prepared for us; not for some 
one else with whom we have little in common but the 
original elements of our nature, whose trials, powers, 
arena, duties, have all been different. 

And, first, it will be a world of Peace and Itest, for 
the weary and heavy-laden will be there. None but 
those — and how many there are God only knows — who 
through life have been bowed to the earth by a weight of 
care and toil and ceaseless pressure which often seemed 
too heavy to be.borne, have an idea of the perfect paradise 
which is comprised in that one word, — “ rest.” “ He 
giveth His beloved sleep.” * To feel the burden roll from 
their shoulders, as it did from that of Christian, as they 
pass the threshold of the Shining Gate, to know that the 
race is ended, that the haven is reached, that the strained 
nerves may be at length relaxed, that the unsleeping 
vigilance which so tasked their strength is needed no 
more, and that a repose that can never be broken may be 

* “ Of all the thoughts of God that are 
Borne inward unto Souls afar, 

Along the Psalmist’s music deep, 

Now tell me if that any is, 

For gift or grace surpassing this : — 

‘ He giveth His Beloved sleep.’ ” 

Miss Barrett. 

13 S 



290 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


suffered to steal over the worn and wearied frame ! “ I 

thank thee, 0 God! that the hard struggle of living is 
over.” This is the first instinctive conception of heaven 
to those 

“ Whom Time lias wearied in its race of Hours,” 
as they sink to sleep when the sharp malady of life is 
over, grateful for the quiet of the grave and the hope of a 
serener world. 

And another class of the weary will be there, resting 
at last in the beautiful.and tranquil world they thirsted 
for so long, where the spirit shall be always willing and 
the flesh never weak, — those, I mean, worn out less by 
the fatigues of the world than by the strife of a turbid 
temperament; to whom urgent appetites, boiling passions, 
and a critical position have made life an hourly conflict 
with the world, the flesh, and the devil; who, though they 
have endured to the end, have been torn to pieces by the 
internecine struggle, and have over and over been on the 
point of resigning the contest in despair. We are most 
of us like this; and a Heaven which shall put an end to 
“the fatal war which our desires have too long waged with 
our destiny ” may still be our inheritance and home. We 
may have sinned frightfully and long; we may have been 
feeble, faithless, half-hearted, and cowardly; relapse may 
have succeeded relapse, till mercy would have been wearied 
out if mercy were a human thing; but the essential point 
still is, that the Great Hay, whenever it come, shall find us 
not turned back, but, however distant, halting, covered with 
the mire of innumerable falls, with our face set as though 
we ivould go to Jerusalem.” If so, we shall have “saved 




ELSEWHERE. 


291 


our souls alive ”; our flickering lamp may need tlie ten- 
derest care to keep it still alight and to feed it with the oil 
which may ultimately nourish it into a steady and endur¬ 
ing flame; our pale souls may, in shrinking and humilia¬ 
tion, have to take the lowest place among the remotest 
ranks of the countless hosts which circle the Eternal 
Throne ; ages of effort may lie before us ; appalling ar¬ 
rears of work which ought to have been done on earth 
may stretch in endless vistas before us ; those at whose 
side we would fain have walked- through the sweet path¬ 
ways of the Spiritual Kingdom may be forever beyond 
our reach (for, alas ! there is no overtaking possible in that 
just world); but, at least, we shall have carried with us 
the germ of an Immortal Being over the threshold of that 
scene where nothing that enters can ever die. 

And the young will be there, with their yet untamed 
and unblunted energies, not wearied and disheartened, as 
lifelong laborers are here, with rolling the stone of Sisyphus 
up an interminable hill. And the aged will be there, with 
their contemplative and passionless serenity. And for 
both will be provided an appropriate work and an appro¬ 
priate enjoyment. For that world can scarcely be pictured 
as an idle one. The Great Spirit will have behests to be 
carried out, to be the ministers of which will be the rich 
reward and the eternal occupation of activity and strength. 
It may be that all these behests might be far more easily, 
far more simply, carried out without the intervention of 
translated human effort; it may be that there, as here, a 
will, a word, would suffice for the instantaneous result: 
« He spake and it was done; He commanded and it stood 



292 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


fast.” But here, we know, He works through human 
agency: why should we not imagine that there the anal¬ 
ogy of His dealings will be preserved, and that men, be¬ 
come angels, will be His agents in Heaven. For the Just 
not yet made Perfect,* there will be missions of mercy, to 
rescue the despairing ; missions of aid, to strengthen those 
who strive ; missions of consolation, to comfort those who 
weep; missions of instruction, to guide the blind; missions 
of conflict, to combat and conquer evil. There will be 
worlds to be guided and redeemed, worlds, it may be, to 
be created, worlds to be “ brought out of darkness into His 
marvellous light.” And the loving soul will be sent to 
bind up the broken-hearted; and the serene soul to breathe 
peace to the cumbered, the harassed, and the way-worn; 
and the fiery soul to do loyal battle with the powers of 
evil. The Hero will have a field of holy conquest assigned 
him, in which he need fear no defeat, and will have to 
weep over no tarnished or dear-bought victory. The 
Prophet, who on earth spoke so often to deaf ears, with 
imperfect knowledge, and an uncertain mind, will be sent 
forth upon a wider mission, with ampler credentials and 
sublimer powers. No healthy energy need fear to lie un¬ 
used, no virtuous activity will waste away in idleness, no 
sword of true temper will rust within its sheath.“j* 

* “ And doubtless unto tliee is given 
A life that bears immortal fruit 
In such great offices as suit 
The full-grown energies of Heaven.” 

In Memoriam. 

t “ Peace is God’s direct assurance 
To the souls that win release 



ELSEWHERE. 


293 


And the wise and searching of this world will he there ; 
those who, with pain and toil, with untiring zeal yet with 
small result, used the faculties which God had given them 
to decipher and comprehend the wonders laid before them ; 
whom piety and science had combined to consecrate, — the 
Priests of Nature, the Martyrs of knowledge. The things 
which here they saw only “ through a glass darkly,” they 
will there discern in the full illumination of the light of 
God. The whole curtain will be drawn up, of which here 
they could only for a moment raise a corner, and the field 
of vision, so bounded here, will be without limit or horizon 
there. Earth has shown them but the title-page of a Book 
which it will be given them to read in Heaven. Their 
utmost efforts here have shown them but the smallest por- 

From this world of hard endurance, — 

Peace, he tells us, only Peace. 

“ To this life’s inquiring traveller, 

Peace of knowledge of all good ; 

To the anxious truth-unraveller, 

Peace of wisdom understood. 

“ To the lover, full fruition 
Of an unexhausted joy ; 

To the warrior, crowned ambition 
With no envy’s base alloy. 

“ To the ruler, sense of action, 

Working out his great intent ; — 

To the Prophet, satisfaction 
In the mission he was sent.” 

Palm Leaves , by Lord Houghton. 




294 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


tion of the wonderful facts of this little planet. There 
will be before them, inviting their research and feeding it 
with fresh results through immortal ages, not only our 
Earth, but the System to which it belongs; next that 
firmament composed of countless myriads of stars with 
their attendant worlds, of which that system forms one of 
the smallest units; then all those remoter galaxies, the 
bare existence of which is all that we can discover here, 
which lie embosomed in absymal space far beyond the far¬ 
thest limits of our Milky Way. There will be the secrets 
of Time as well as those of Space for us to learn; the foot¬ 
steps of the Eternal in all worlds during those immeas¬ 
urable epochas and ages of the Past, which Geology and 
Astronomy dimly agree to indicate; the existences, the 
evolutions, the tragedies, and the redemptions which now 
we can barely and dimly conjecture, but which then will 
form the feast and pasture of our daily life. There will 
be forms of Being to investigate, far up through grada¬ 
tions and cycles which distance all human fancy, — their 
nature, history, feelings, motives, and destiny. 

“ Here must I stop, 

Or is there aught beyond 1 What hand unseen 
Impels me onward through the glowing orbs 
Of habitable nature, far remote, 

To the dread confines of eternal Night ; 

To solitudes of vast, unpeopled space, 

The deserts of creation, wide and wild, 

Where embryo systems and unkindled suns 
Sleep in the womb of chaos ? — Fancy droops, 

And Thought, astonished, stops her bold career.” 

Mrs. Barbauld. 




ELSEWHERE. 


295 


And thousands of pious and perplexed inquirers will be 
there, who, during long years of faith and meditation, 
sought, and sought in vain, the solution of the dark enig¬ 
mas of existence; whose prayer was for Light (ev Be $aet 
teal oXeoraov) ; whose spirits, aspiring forever to pierce 
those sad and solemn mysteries which cast such midnight 
gloom over all thoughtful souls and drive the less trustful 
to despair, forever fell hack baffled and disheartened, but 
unshaken in fidelity and love. They have prayed and 
hoped for Heaven, not as a scene of happiness or recom¬ 
pense, but as a world of Explanation, where their ques¬ 
tions would be answered and their difficulties solved. On 
earth the grievous and incomprehensible dispensations of 
Providence beset them before and behind, and laid a heavy 
hand upon them, but could not drive them from their 
anchor of hope sure and steadfast. Will not their confi¬ 
dence be justified to them in their “Father’s House” ? * 
For years, generations, centuries, they saw glorious 
efforts baffled, pure, high hopes discomfited and crushed, 
good seed, sown with care and watered with the blood of 
martyrs, choked or carried off, and never fructifying; 
they saw fraud and rapine, brutality and barbarism, ram¬ 
pant and omnipotent, and justice, truth, and innocence 
trampled in the dust; the good cause ruined and the bad 
triumphant; the servants of God everywhere defeated 

* “ They trusted God was Love indeed, 

And love Creation’s final law, — 

Though Nature, red in tooth and claw 
With ravine, shrieked against the creed.” 

In Memoriam. 




296 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


and his purposes apparently thwarted and overruled; 
they saw myriads of His creatures doomed through life 
to darkness, to suffering, to hopeless ignorance and inev¬ 
itable vice; and they stood aghast, shuddering, and 
perplexed at the seeming contravention of the Divine 
decrees. These mysteries made their wretchedness here. 
Will not the solution of them make their happiness 
hereafter ? And as, with eyes purged from the mists of 
mortality, and powers strengthened by the elixir of spir¬ 
itual life, they approach those problems which were too 
intricate and too profound for earthly intellects to grapple 
with, will they not marvel how simple is the key that 
opens and elucidates them all ? 

The loving and the tender will be there. It would 
seem even as if Heaven was in some especial manner 
their rightful inheritance: Love is so infinite, and its 
earthly horizon so bounded, its earthly development so 
imperfect, its earthly catastrophes so sad ; its undying 
tenacity, its profound tenderness, and its boundless yearn¬ 
ings seem so incongruous, as eonstrasted with its frail 
objects, and its poor performances, and its momentary 
life. There are those, and the denizens of our anticipated 
world may consist of them in overwhelming proportion, 
of whose nature affection has been the main-spring, the 
strength, the sunbeam, the beauty ; wdiose heart has been 
their chiefest treasure; to whom fame, ambition, power, 
success, have been at best only the casual and outside 
objects of existence; wdio, in a word, lived on love. 
Generation after generation, age after age, through the 



ELSEWHERE. 


297 


countless cycles of the Past, human creatures have linked 
themselves together, never dreaming that their connection 
v as limited "by time, or that their ties would be severed 
by the Great Destroyer, and have consigned the husk and 
framework of their cherished companions to the dust, 
never doubting that these comrades watched over them 
from the spiritual world, and were waiting to receive 
them when the years were ripe. Millions in all times 
have walked courageously into the Great Darkness, satis¬ 
fied that they were going to rejoin the company of those 
whose places had been long “ left void in their earthly 
* ^ i ^ Ion g yearnings, to satisfy again “ the 

mighty hunger of the heart ” in the fulness of eternal 
joy. Whatever human affections have been pure, fervent, 
self-sacrificing, devoted, and enduring, look forward to 
Heaven for their renewal, their resting-place, and their 
full fruition. If this expectation be delusive, what 
instinct of the heart can henceforth be trusted ? 

And the aspiring and spiritual will be at home at last, 
— those whose thoughts have been all prayer; to whom 
the blessings promised to the meek, the mourners, and 
the merciful are as nothing compared to that pronounced 
upon the “ pure in heart ” ; to whose thought all other 
beauties of the heavenly city are swallowed up in this: 

that there is no need of the Sun, neither of the Moon, 
to shine in it, for the glory of God doth lighten it, and 
the Lamb is the light thereof.” They shall see God. 
What this may mean; what may be the nature of that 
vision by which finite and created Beings can be enabled 
to behold the Infinite and Eternal Spirit of the Universe; 

13 * 






298 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


in what manner, or through the bestowal of what new 
powers, His awful Presence will be made manifest to the 
souls of the Just made perfect, we cannot even attempt 
to realize. It may be that the very purity which they 
have striven after here and attained there, will endow 
them with a clearness of sight denied to the less un¬ 
stained of the redeemed, in virtue of which they can 
penetrate to the inner circle which surrounds the Throne, 
and reach the immediate Presence of the Most High. 


Whether, in the lapse of ages and in the course 01 
progressive Being, the more dormant portions of each 
man’s nature will be called out, and his desires, and 
therefore the elements of his Heaven, change; whether 
the loving will learn to thirst for knowledge, and the 
fiery and energetic to value peace, and the active and 
earnest to grow weary of struggle and achievement and 
to long for tenderness and repose, and the rested to begin 
a new life of aspiration, and those who had long lain 
satisfied with the humbler constituents of the beatific 
state, to yearn after the conditions of a loftier Being, we 
cannot tell. Probably. It may be, too, that the ten¬ 
dency of every thought and feeling will be to gravitate 
towards the great Centre, to merge in one mighty and all- 
absorbing emotion. The thirst for knowledge may find 
its ultimate expression in the contemplation of the Divine 
Nature, — in which, indeed, all may be contained. It may 
be that all longings will be finally resolved into striving 
after a closer union with God, and all human affections 




ELSEWHERE. 


299 


merged in the desire to be a partaker in His nature. It 
may be that, in future stages of our progress, we shall 
become more and more severed from the Human and 
joined to the Divine; that, starting on the threshold of 
the Eternal world with the one beloved Being who has 
been the partner of our thoughts and feelings on this 
earth, we may find, as we go forward to the Goal, and 
soar upwards to the Throne, and dive deeper and deeper 
into the mysteries and immensities of Creation, that 
affection will gradually merge in Thought, and the crav¬ 
ings and yearnings of the Heart be calmed and super¬ 
seded by the sublimer interests of the perfected Intelli¬ 
gence ; that the hands which have so long been joined in 
love may slowly unclasp to be stretched forth towards 
the approaching glory; that the glance of tenderness 
which we cast on the companion at our side may become 
faint, languid, and hurried, before the earnest gaze with 
which we watch “ the light that shall be revealed.” We 
might even picture to ourselves that epoch in our progress 
through successively loftier and more purified existences, 
when those who on earth strengthened each other in 
every temptation, sustained each other under every trial, 
mingled smiles at every joy and tears at every sorrow ; 
and who, in succeeding varieties of Being, hand in hand, 
heart with heart, thought for thought, penetrated together 
each new secret, gained each added height, glowed with 
each new rapture, drank in each successive revelation, 
shall have reached that point where all separate individu¬ 
ality and all lower affections will be merged in one 
absorbing Presence; when the awful nearness of the Per- 




300 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


feet Love will dissolve all other ties and swallow up all 
other feelings; and when the finished and completed Soul, 
before melting away into that Sea of Light which will be 
its element forever, shall turn to take a last fond look of 
. the now glorified but thereby lost companion of so much 
anguish and so many joys ! * But we cannot yet con¬ 
template the prospect without pain; therefore it will not 
be yet; not till we can contemplate it with joy; for 
Heaven is a scene of bliss and recompense, not of sorrow 
and bereavement. Why therefore picture it at all ? 


All these speculations may of course be utterly futile 
and irrelevant, and the discrepancy may be so vast and so 
essential between the material and the spiritual world that 
no pictures sketched by human pencil and filled in with 
earthly coloring will bear the faintest resemblance to the 
sublime and inconceivable reality. Perhaps no soul still 
shrouded in the flesh can worthily or even approximately 
dream of “ the glory which shall be revealed ” : the mere 
step from death into the higher life will so change, con¬ 
vulse, and re-create all the elements of our Being, that 
what now seems to us supremely to be desired — the fe¬ 
licity of which the prospect has guided, strengthened, and 
consoled us here, the joys for which we have cheerfully 

* “ He seeks at least 
“ Upon the last and sharpest height, 

Before the spirits fade away, 

Some landing-place to clasp, and say 
‘ Farewell ! we lose ourselves in Light.’ ” 




ELSEWHERE. 


301 


bartered all the beautiful possessions and the rich promises 
of Earth — may then appear to our “ unsealed vision” poor, 
pale, worthless, and inadequate, and that the ineffable 
reality may not only transcend, but utterly traverse all our 
aspirations. But if so, it is obvious that the mere fact of 
t>ur seeing it aright would cancel its influence upon us. 
The action of a future world as a control on our deeds and 
a stimulus to our desires depends upon its being such, 
upon our believing it such at least, as we can conceive of 
and aspire to. If it is to operate upon us it must be pic- 
turable by us. Only through our ideas of it can it influ¬ 
ence our lives. 

Why then quarrel with* our conceptions because neces¬ 
sarily imperfect, and probably much more, — as all finite 
ideas of the Infinite, all material description of the Spirit¬ 
ual, must be ? Why seek after a fidelity of delineation 
or an etherealization of conception of which the conse¬ 
quences must be so fatal and benumbing ? Heaven will 
be, if not what we desire now, at least what we shall 
desire then. If it be not contracted to our human dreams, 
those dreams will be expanded to its vast reality. If it be 
not fitted for us, we shall be prepared for it. In the true 
sense, if not in our sense, it will be a scene of serene 
felicity, the end of toil, the end of strife, the end of grief, 
the end of doubt, — a Temple, a Haven, and a Home! 







APPENDIX. 










APPENDIX. 


I T is not only probable, but, I apprehend, quite certain, 
that no country is really peopled up to its full possible 
limit of plentiful subsistence. But there are two or three 
countries in Europe which may be considered to approach this 
limit; and these, therefore, we will adopt as our standard of 
comparison, — the more readily as they differ materially in their 
physical conditions. One of them, Belgium, has a climate by 
no means enviable, and a soil originally and in many parts the 
reverse of fertile. Another, Lombardy, has a soil naturally 
rich, a warm and genial sky, and great facilities of irrigation. 
Some of the cantons of Switzerland maintain, probably, as large 
a population, and certainly as prosperous and well-fed a one, 
as can anywhere be found, — Zurich, Appenzell, Argovie, 
Thurgovie, for example. Of these we will select Zurich.'" 
Of course the comparison we are instituting cannot be a very 
exact or rigidly conclusive one, inasmuch as countries vary 
indefinitely in their natural advantages and their capacity for 
supporting inhabitants. Still there are not many in Europe 
much better off in this respect than Lombardy, nor much less 

* Some of the cantons, and some which we believe are more purely 
agricultural than Zurich, have even a denser population ; thus Basle has 
420, Argovie 398, and Thurgovie 368 to the square mile. 

T 



306 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


favored than Belgium; while Zurich presents an instance of 
the condition which may he reached by a people who unite 
good sense and good government to fair natural advantages. 


Inhabitants to a Square Mile (English). 


Belmum 

o 

. 440 

Ireland .... 

180 

Lombardy 

370 

German Confederation . 

180 

Zurich 

. 365 

Austria .... 

164 

England and Wales 

350 

Switzerland . 

157 

Holland 

. 300 

Spain .... 

90 

United Kingdom . 

225 

Turkey in Europe. 

76 

Italy .... 

. 225 

Bussia in Europe 

30 

France . 

180 

Sweden.... 

22 


It would appear clear from this comparison that of all the 
states of Europe, only Great Britain, Belgium, Holland, Switz¬ 
erland, and perhaps Italy, can he regarded as amply populated. 
There are three of the largest which assuredly are very far 
from being so, viz., Spain, Bussia, and Turkey. France, with 
a soil and climate in the aggregate superior to those of Eng¬ 
land, supports only half the numbers, though she supports 
them no doubt more exclusively from the produce of her own 
soil. A great part of the north of European Bussia is, we 
know, unfitted for the production of human food, though 
yielding largely the materials for human warmth, clothing, and 
shelter. But no one who is aware how wretched is the state 
of agriculture even in the provinces most favored by nature, 
and over what a vast part of the empire these provinces extend, 
and how sparse is the population which now inhabits them, 
can doubt that the country as a whole could support with ease 
250,000,000 instead of 60,000,000 as at present. The case of 
Turkey is almost as strong. The productiveness of many of 
its provinces is well known; yet, with the same area as France, 




APPENDIX. 


307 


she counts only 16,000,000 of people, instead of 36,000,000, 
and with four times the area of England, and a far finer cli¬ 
mate, she only maintains a population smaller by one eighth. 
Spain is just as backward, and more blamable, for her soil 
and climate are, or might be made, productive in the extreme. 
Her extent is nearly as great as that of France (183,000 square 
miles to 207,000), yet her population per square mile is only 
one half that of France and one fourth that of England. 
What increased numbers she might support may be guessed 
from the fact that some of her provinces do even now show 
nearly 250 to the square mile. She might easily support 
70,000,000, instead of her present 16,000,000, and still not 
exceed the proportions of Belgium, a far less favored land. 
Hungary, too, ought to be specially noted. It contains now 
about 11,000,000, or not more than 135 to the square mile. 
Considering the extraordinary fertility of her soil, she might 
unquestionably find room for 30,000,000, if human ignorance 
and folly interposed no artificial obstacles. On the whole, it is 
a moderate calculation that the 270,000,000, of which the pop¬ 
ulation of Europe now consists, might become 500,000,000, 
without any crowding or necessary inconvenience. 

A much larger number is pointed at by another mode of 
calculation. It is estimated (for authorities, see Alison on 
Population, II. 480) that an acre of wheat can supply three 
persons with food, and an acre of potatoes ten persons. But 
people must be clothed, housed, and warmed as well as fed; 
and for these purposes wood must be planted and domestic 
animals must be kept. We may therefore allot (say) one acre 
and a half to each individual for all his needs, — assuredly a 
liberal estimate, for in the Canton of Zurich, an acre and a 
quarter is even now found sufficient. ^7ow, Europe contains 
2,421,000,000 of acres ; and if we throw aside — being guided 



308 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


by the average of Ireland (one of the worst lands in this 
respect) — one third as unavailable by reason of its being water, 
or rock, or high mountain, or unmanageable bog, it would 
still maintain, at the above proportion, 1,070,000,000, or four 
times its present population. If we allow two acres per head, 
it would support above 800,000,000. 

I have no idea of examining the actual and possible density 
of population in Asia and Africa in any detail. Our knowl¬ 
edge of those quarters of the world is too imperfect, and their 
statistics far too loose to render any such investigation in the 
least degree satisfactory. A reference to a few specific facts is 
all that is necessary. Thus, the population of the Asiatic 
provinces of Turkey shows only 24 to the square mile, yet 
Syria and Asia Minor and parts of Mesopotamia are among the 
most favored countries in the world, and used, in former days, 
to sustain far greater numbers than at present. To the travel¬ 
ler of to-day, they present the appearance in many parts almost 
of a desert land. There can be no doubt that, under a good 
government, and with a sensible and energetic race, they might 
contain ten times their actual numbers, and still not approach 
the density of Belgium or Lombardy. Their 16,000,000 may 
easily become 160,000,000. Probably nearly the same may 
be said of Persia. 

The African dependencies of the Ottoman Porte are said to 
contain only about four inhabitants to the square mile. But 
much of their territory is desert. If, however, we look to 
South Africa, we find*an almost unlimited territory thinly 
inhabited, yet capable of rich cultivation, and swarming with 
animal life in its lower phases. The entire of Africa is esti¬ 
mated, according to the latest authorities, to have an area 
of 12,000,000 English square miles, and a population of 
120,000,000, or about 10 persons to the square mile. But 



APPENDIX. 


309 


British Africa, of which we know most, has an area of about 
120,000 square miles, and a population of 350,000, or not 
three to the square mile. It is obvious that here we have 
space for nearly indefinite expansion. A five or ten fold in¬ 
crease (that is, about 1,000,000,000 for the whole continent) 
would be no extravagant estimate of ultimate possibilities, 
especially since recent discoveries have proved that even Equa¬ 
torial Africa can sustain large and populous nations in what to 
them is plenty. 

But it is in America and Australia that we shall find the 
widest field for the dispersion and multiplication of mankind. 
America, it may be said, is only just beginning to be peopled. 
Except in a few localities it is only sprinkled with human 
beings. To say nothing of the older regions of the Hudson’s 
Bay Territory, there is a vast district, lying between Canada 
and Vancouver’s Island, with scarcely any inhabitants, though 
capable of containing many millions.* A great portion of this 
district is represented as singularly fertile, far more so than 
the corresponding longitudes belonging to the United States. 
Yet the Bed Biver is the only settlement yet inhabited by 
Europeans, and these are few in number. The day will come, 
there can be little doubt, when it will be the centre of a 
nation of 50,000,000. The population of the Canadas was in 
1861 only 2,500,000, or less than eight to the square mile. 
It might easily become 75,000,000, or 240 to the square mile. 
As we proceed to the United States, we find that the oldest 
provinces, though far the poorest by nature, are the most densely 
peopled. The six New England States averaged, in 1860, 49 
inhabitants to the square mile, Massachusetts reaching as high 
as 130. The six Middle States, including Maryland and Ohio, 
averaged 70 ; Ohio and New York, the one with its vast 

* Article in “Edinburgh Review,” British America, April, 1864. 




310 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


tracts of rich soil, and the other with its commerce, industry, 
and great cities into the bargain, only showing densities of 
about G2 and 80 respectively. We say nothing of the slave 
States, which only averaged 18 to the square mile, nor of the 
desolate territory near the Rocky Mountains. But if the 
seven Northwestern States and Texas were peopled even to the 
extent that New England and New York have already reached, 
— say 60 to the square mile, — they would contain a popula¬ 
tion of 30,000,000; 200,000,000 is a moderate estimate for 
the future members of the Great Republic. 

Mexico is a splendid country, of vast capabilities, both of 
soil and climate. Its present population is estimated at 
8,000,000, or about eight to the square mile. In Humboldt’s 
day, a far larger area contained only 5,800,000 souls. The 
country, there can be no doubt, would be scantily peopled 
at 160 to the square mile, or twenty-fold its present number of 
inhabitants. Of Central America we know little, except that 
its population was once far greater than at present. Parts 
only of its surface are unhealthy, and even these, probably, not 
necessarily or incurably so. The best geographers estimate its 
actual inhabitants at about 2,000,000, or 13 to the square 
mile. It certainly might maintain live or ten fold that num¬ 
ber. As for South America, it is impossible to state, with any 
approach to accuracy, either what numbers it does or might 
contain. Enormous areas of its surface cannot be said to be 
inhabited at all, though very copiously endowed by nature. 
Thus, — 


Chili has to the square mile about . 

6 

Brazil “ “ 

nearly 

3 

Peru “ “ 

U 

• • • 

2 

Paraguay “ “ 

u 

• • • 

4 

The Argentine Republic 

u 

• • • 

1 

Uruguay and Patagonia 

not 

1 




APPENDIX. 


311 


J 


There is certainly ample room yet for 200,000,000 or 
300,000,000 on the continent of South America, and as cer¬ 
tainly for another 100,000,000 — probably twice or thrice that 
number (for each successive exploration discovers fresh wealth 
of fertile land) — in the great colonies of Australasia.* 

No one who even looks over these statistics can avoid the 
conclusion that the earth is not yet one quarter — perhaps not 
one tenth — peopled. No one who reads books of travels in 
much detail can avoid having this conclusion deepened into a 
vivid impression and conviction. The entire population of 
the globe is calculated by the best geographers to be about 
1,100,000,000, and probably this is rather an extreme estimate. 
Of this, Europe furnishes nearly 300,000,000, and Asia up¬ 
wards of 600,000,000, leaving only two for the vast continents 
of North and South America, Africa, and Australia. We 
cannot form even an approximate conjecture of the length of 
time which has been needed for the prolific powers of man, 
acting under the disadvantageous circumstances of comparative 
ignorance and social barbarism, to people the world up to its 
present numbers. It may have been 20,000 years ; it may 
have been 200,000 ; it may have been incomparably more. 
No one, we fancy, whose opinion is worth considering on a 

* The average density of the two Americas is about 6 to the square 
mile. “The Gazetteer of the World’’states that of Africa at 7, of 
Asia 32, and of Europe at 82. These, however, are only rough esti¬ 
mates. 

New Zealand contains as nearly as may be the same acreage as the 
British Isles, but New Zealand has only a population of 100,000, Britain 
a population of 30,000,000, or 300 times as great, yet New Zealand is 
probably superior to our islands both in soil and climate. Australasia 
has a larger area than Europe,—upwards of 3,000,000 square miles. 
There is nothing, so far as we know at present, to forbid the expectation 
that it may one day maintain an equal population. 




312 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


scientific question, would place it below the smallest figure I 
have named. No doubt the increase of the human race may 
be expected to proceed at an accelerated pace in future, unless 
there should be some retarding influence among yet unrecog¬ 
nized physiological laws, such as we have hinted at. Agri¬ 
culture lias made vast improvements; famines are not to be 
dreaded as formerly; few now in any country die of want, 
and fewer will die from this cause every year, as the world 
grows older ; communication between distant lands — between 
those whose population is redundant and those whose land is 
cheap and plentiful — becomes easier day by day, and man¬ 
kind may now disperse as fast as they multiply; wars, too, 
and pestilence may, it is to be hoped, grow rarer and less deso¬ 
lating ; and assuredly the average duration of individual life 
is on the increase. Still it is plain that, before the earth can 
be peopled up to its fair limit of density, — the limit, that is, 
compatible with an ample supply of the necessaries and com¬ 
forts of life, — a sufficient number of generations or ages must 
elapse to permit all the influences developed by civilization to 
expand and operate. Time is all we want, and time, in ade¬ 
quate measure, we may surely count upon. 

Not only is the earth not yet a quarter peopled, but even 
the inhabited portion is scarcely yet a quarter cultivated. In 
many countries the soil is barely scratched. Even in England 
it is not made to yield on an average to more than one half of 
its capacity. Perhaps only in Belgium, Switzerland, and Lom¬ 
bardy do the actual and the potential produce of the soil in 
any measure correspond. We can pretend to no accurate esti¬ 
mate of the number of bushels of wheat, or tons of hay or 
of root crops which an acre of ordinary land under good farm¬ 
ing might be made to yield, nor to any statement, provable 
by authentic statistics, of what such land does yield, as at 




APPENDIX. 


313 


present handled. All we can do is to collect a certain number 
of reliable facts from the best authorities bearing on such 
comparison. The conclusion will be as convincing as if we 
were able to draw it out in formally calculated tables. 

The average yield of wheat in England is considered to be 
about 3^ quarters, or 26 bushels per acre. The author of “ Lois 
Wheedon Husbandry,” on not special land, and with no 
manure beyond the straw, obtained for 19 years an average of 
34 bushels. A farmer in Hertfordshire, also not peculiarly 
favored, averages 30 from all his land, and has often reached 
47, and even 57 bushels per acre. Mr. Lawes, another farmer 
in the same county, has averaged 35 and 36 for 12 years, and, 
in 1863 and 1864, he reached as high as from 40 to 55, 
according to the manure he used (“ Times,” October 19, 1864). 
Even 60 bushels to the acre has been achieved in good years. 

Of oats in England, the ordinary yield is 40 bushels to the 
acre. But 60 are often reached, and 80 by no means unfre- 
quently. 

In Ireland the average of wheat is about 24 bushels to the 
statute acre, and of oats about 40. The variation between the 
produce of different counties in the same year is enormous, 
ranging from 7| cwts. to 12 cwts. of wheat, and from 11 to 19 
cwts. of oats ; and in the same counties, in different years, from 
8 to 14 cwts. 

Of mangel wurzel, some farmers grow 30 tons, and some 60 
or 64 to the acre. Of swedes, some 16, and others 40 tons. 

It is clear, then, that the average actual produce of cereals 
and root crops in England falls short, probably by one half, 
of what it might be, even with our present lights and practice, 
and of what actually is obtained by individuals in many 
instances. Belgium and Lombardy surpass our best farming, 

14 




314 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


with perhaps very few exceptions. It is stated (“ Gazetteer 
of the World ”) that the wheat yield of Belgium is 32 bushels 
for 2 of seed, or sixteen-fold ; whereas that of Great Britain 
is only eight to ten fold.* But France, we find, falls as far 
short of England’s average in its agricultural productiveness, as 
England’s average falls short of England’s best. France has as 
good a soil and a far better climate than we have, and, to set 
against deficient science and inadequate manure, has the ad¬ 
vantage of la petite culture in a very high degree. Yet, on the 
unquestionable authority of M. Leonce de Lavergne, its yield 
in every article is only half of ours. The following are a few 
of his statements : f — 

The yield of oats in England is 5 quarters to the acre, and 
sometimes as high as 10 ; in France it is only 2|- quarters. 
The yield of wheat in England is 31, quarters to the acre, or 
25 hectolitres to the hectare ; that of France averages only 12 
hectolitres to the hectare. In the case of animal production 
the disproportion is even greater. England is estimated to 
maintain two sheep per hectare; France only two thirds of one 
sheep. Each cow in England is estimated to yield 1,000 litres 
of milk ; in France only 500. The average yield in meats of 
cattle slain in France for food is 100 kilogs. ; in England 250. 
“ With 8,000,000 head of cattle and 30,000,000 of hectares to 
feed them on, British agriculture produces 500,000,000 of 
kilogs. of meat. France, with 10,000,000 head and 53,000,000 
of hectares, only 400,000,000 of kilogs.” M. Leonce de 
Lavergne sums up by a calculation, showing the entire gross 
produce of soil (animals and vegetables) in the two countries, 

* McCulloch (Geog. Diet.) states the produce of the AVaes County, 
the most fertile and highly cultivated part of Flanders, to be 20^ bushels 
of wheat and 41 of oats to the acre. 

4 Economie Rurale de l’Angleterre, c. ii., iii., iv. 



APPENDIX. 


315 


the result of which is that England yields 200 francs’ worth 
per hectare, and France only 100 francs. 

A\ e are accustomed to consider the western provinces of 
Canada and the United States as offering about the most fertile 
and unlimited wheat-fields in the world. Nearly boundless in 
extent they certainly are, and, for the most, of extraordinary 
natural fertility. But this only enhances our surprise at find¬ 
ing how very moderate the present yield, even of their best 
lands, actually is, and our conception of the vast difference 
between what they- do and what they might produce. The 
best lands in Canada, and Michigan, and Illinois, for example, 
are far superior, both in soil and climate, to the good lands of 
England ; yet neither their average nor their maximum produce 
in wheat approaches ours. Our average, be it remembered, is 
about 26 bushels to the acre, and our maximum may be jmt at 
60. In the State of New York the average is 14, and the 
* maximum about 20. In Michigan the average is 11, and the 
maximum 18. In New Brunswick the usual yield is 18, in 
Canada West 13, in Ohio 15. Yet in most of these districts 
the soil is represented to be of almost inexhaustible richness, 
— virgin soil in fact. The above figures are collected from 
Johnstone’s “ Notes on North America,” a first-rate authority 
on these subjects. There can be little doubt that English 
farming on Michigan or Ohio land would give a result far 
exceeding anything yet obtained in either country; and why 
should this combination not be 1 Is it not certain that some 
day or other it will be 1 In order to give some conception of 
the vast space yet to be travelled over before even the culti¬ 
vated portions of the temperate regions yield the amount of 
human sustenance that they are capable of yielding, we will 
place some of the above facts in a tabular form, calling atten¬ 
tion merely to the circumstance that the soil and climate (those 



316 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


of Great Britain) which stand at the head of the list are, of 
all those mentioned, about the least favored by nature. 

Produce of Wheat per Statute Acre in Bushels. 


Michigan 

average 

. 11 

Canada West 

• 

13 

France 

a 

9 • 

. 13 

New York 

U 

. 

14 

Ohio 

u 

• . 

. 15 

New Brunswick 

u 

. 

18 

American 

maximum 

. 19 

Belgian 

u 

. 

20 

English 

average 

. 26 

u 

maximum . 

60* 

Possible American “ 

o 

oo 

• 


It is clear from the above comparison that we are not over¬ 
stating the case, when we say that the actual produce of some 
cf the most extensive and fertile wheat-fields in the world is 
not above one third of the potential produce, even on the loose 
agricultural system which at present prevails almost universally. 
And the same proportion probably holds good of nearly all 
other crops. But a few facts, fully ascertained and placed 
beyond doubt, will suffice to satisfy us that an increase far 
beyond what has been just mentioned is within our reach. 

Economy of seed is one mode in which the available yield of 
cereals may be greatly increased. The ordinary consumption 
of seed wheat in the broadcast sowing commonly practised is 
2J bushels, or 10 pecks, to the acre, and this, as we have seen, 
yields an average crop of about 26 bushels, or tenfold. In 
drilling, or “ dibbling,” 1 bushel, or 4 pecks, is held to suffice, 
and to yield heavier crops, — often 30 bushels, or thirty fold. 

* This is the maximum yet reported in regular farming. Mr. Hallett, 
however, by his process of wide sowing and selection, had reached a rate 
of 108 bushels per acre (“ Journ. Agric. Soc.,” XXII. p. 377). 




APPENDIX. 


317 


In one case 4 pecks of seed yielded 40 bushels, or forty-fold. 
One experiment tried in the State of New York, where only 
2 pecks of seed were used, showed a yield at the rate of 80 
bushels to the acre, or one hundred and sixty fold. (“ Year 
Book of Agricultural Facts,” 1860, pp. 110, 129, 131.) But 
all these cases fade into insignificance before those recorded by 
Mr. Hallett, as the result of a long series of careful experi¬ 
ments. The extent to which economy of seed is possible may 
be guessed from the statement made in reference to the “ tiller¬ 
ing,” or horizontal spreading out of the seeds of wheat, “ that 
the stems produced from a single grain having perfect freedom 
of growth will, in the spring, while lying flat on the surface, 
extend over a circle three feet in diameter, producing at harvest 
50 or 60 ears.” Now, an ear contains sometimes 50 grains or 
more. The above increase, therefore, is 2,500 at least. Of 
the extent to which economy of seed has been practically car¬ 
ried experimentally, we can produce no more signal or instruc¬ 
tive instance than the following : Two adjacent fields, similar 
in all respects, were selected, and sown with the same seed 
wheat. In the one case 6 pecks per acre were sown, and 
yielded 54 bushels, or 934,000 ears ; in the other case, 4J 
pints per acre were used, planting them in single grains a foot 
apart, and the yield was 1,002,000 ears, or a larger quantity 
than was produced at the other side of the hedge from more 
than twenty-one times the seed employed. (“ Journal of Agricult¬ 
ural Society,” XXII. p. 372, et seq.) But, allowing this to be 
an extreme case, it is clear that 2 pecks, if not 1, will suffice 
where 10 are now habitually used ] and the saving thus eflect- 
ible would be equivalent to a virtual increase of the wheat 
crop from 8 to 10 per cent.* 

* Mr. Hallett found that a field planted with 6 pecks per acre yielded 
only 54 bushels, and one of inferior soil, planted with one peck, yielded 



318 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


Selection of seed is another point to be noticed. Of the 
gain attainable by this precaution, the celebrated “pedigree 
wheat” exhibited in 1861 may be cited as probably the best 
example. In the article just referred to, published in the 
“Journal of the Agricultural Society,” Mr. Hallett gives a 
detailed account of his experiments, and their remarkably 
successful result. By simply selecting a couple of ears of 
moderate size, and excellent quality originally, and then, in 
successive years, sowing only, and carefully, the best and largest 
grains from the produce thus inaugurated, he had in five years 
doubled the length of the ear, increased the number of ears 
springing from one grain from 10 to 52. and the number of 
grains in the ear from 47 to 123. I will not go into any fur¬ 
ther detail, which, for my purpose, is quite unnecessary ; but 
two points brought out by Mr. Hallett are important as show¬ 
ing the possible powers of reproduction in the wheat plant 
when properly treated : “ I have now (he says) a field of seven 
acres planted with the produce of a single grain planted two 
years ago, — one acre of it with the produce of a single ear 
planted one year ago.” Again : the ordinary yield in fair 
farming, that is, where two bushels of wheat are used for seed, 
he states, is considered to be about one ear, or 100 grains, for 
every two grains sown, or about 50 fold. His best grain 
produced the first year 688 fold ; after two years’ repeated 
selection, 1,190 fold; and after four years, 2,145 fold. 

The use of appropriate manures is another mode by which 
the produce of the soil may be increased to an amount as yet 
incalculable. Though careful husbandry, such as is practised in 
Belgium and Lombardy, and in some parts of France, where 

57 bushels, showing that the extra quantity of seed used was worse than 
thrown away. He estimates the average waste of wheat thus caused in 
England at a million of quarters annually (Vol. XXII. p. 380). 



APPENDIX. 


« 


319 


la petite culture prevails, is by no means in its infancy, yet 
scientific husbandry is. By scientific husbandry, I mean the 

v 

adaptation of the crop to the soil, and the use of appropriate 
manures which will return to the earth what the present crop 
needs, or what previous crops have exhausted. Attention to, 
and comprehension of, the latter point, date from Professor 
Liebig’s works, that is, from our own time, and indeed are not 
yet diffused. Thousands of facts bearing on the subject might 
be accumulated, but they are not needed. We will cull a few, 
mainly from Liebig’s “ Modern Agriculture.” Where an unma¬ 
nured plot yielded 15 pounds of grain, and a similar plot, 
supplied with inappropriate manure, gave 16 pounds, the plot 
treated with the fitting nutriment gave 36 pounds (p. 57). 
Mr. Lawes records an experiment where the proportionate 
result was as follows (p. 77): — 

Yield without manure . . . 1,000 pounds. 

With one sort of manure . . 1,690 “ 

With the right manure . . . 2,000 “ 

Liebig considers (p. 267) that by the use and improvement 
of phosphate of lime, “ the amount of provender for cattle has 
been increased as much as if the area of every field for green 
crops had been doubled.” What the introduction of guano 
has done for agriculture, — especially for the turnip * and the 
sugar-cane, — we have all a general idea. A couple of hundred 
weight per acre, according to Lawes and Caird, will, even for 
wheat, give an increase of eight bushels of grain, or 30 per 
cent, besides 25 per cent in straw; and one ton of guano is 
equal in value to 33 tons of ordinary farm-yard manure (“ Aes- 
bit’s History of Guano,” pp. 21, 25). 

* In one case the unmanured field yielded 17 tons, and that treated 
with guano 31 tons (“ Journ. Agric. Soc.,” XXII. p. 86). 



320 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


Again: another indication of the vast increase of food 
obtainable from land already settled and cultivated may be 
found in a comparison of the number of cattle and sheep which 
may be kept on a given acreage, by merely grazing, and by 
arable cultivation and stall feeding, either exclusively or in 
combination with grazing. Thus, a cow requires from three to 
four acres of pasture land ; whereas one acre of w T ell-managed 
land under tillage would suffice ; some say even less. (Consult 
Morton’s “ Cyclopaedia of Agriculture.”) If this be correct, 
the production of animal food might be doubled in Great 
Britain, and trebled nearly everywhere else, by a simple change 
of system, and the application of more labor to the soil, with¬ 
out the addition of a single acre. M. Leonce de Lavergne 
states that, on an average, England keeps two sheej} on a hectare, 
and France only two thirds of a sheep. In the case of cattle 
the comparison is still more unfavorable to France, both as 
regards the size and number of animals. The milk yielded 
by each cow is double in England, and “ with 8,000,000 
head on 30,000,000 hectares, England produces 500,000,000 
of kilos, of meat, while France, with 10,000,000 head on 
53,000,000 hectares, only produces 400,000,000 kilos.” Thus 
France has not only a vast distance to travel before she reaches 
England, but England has at least as far to travel before she 
reaches an easily attainable ideal. Other countries, ci fortiori , 
are still further behind the possible. 

There is yet another mode in which the amount of human 
life sustainable on a given area, and therefore throughout the 
chief portion of the habitable globe, may be almost indefinitely 
increased, viz., by a substitution 'pro tanto of vegetable for 
animal food. Practically, of course, w r e should never wish to 
encounter the risk of again feeding a whole people mainly on 
potatoes, though Irishmen have thriven on that diet, and 



APPENDIX. 


321 


though an acre in potatoes will sustain three times the amount 
of human life of an acre in wheat. But a given acreage of 
wheat will feed at least ten times as many men as the same 
acreage employed in growing mutton. It is usually calculated 
that the consumption of wheat by an adult is about one quar¬ 
ter per annum, and we know that good land produces four 
quarters. But let us assume that a man confined to bread 
would need two quarters a year; still one acre would support 
two men. But a man confined to meat would require 3 pounds 
a day, and it is considered a liberal calculation if an acre spent 
in grazing sheep and cattle will yield in beef or mutton more 
than 50 pounds on an average, — the best farmer in Norfolk 
having averaged 90 pounds, but a great majority of farms in 
Great Britain only reaching 20 pounds. On these data, it 
would require 22 acres of pasture land to sustain one adult 
if fed only meat. It is obvious, that here, again, is the indi¬ 
cation of a vast possible increase in the population sustainable 
on a given area. 

But there is much more yet, all tending in the same direc¬ 
tion, and confirming our former inferences, if it were needful, 
or if we had time to go into it. There is an enormous area 
employed in the production of mere superfluities, such as 
tobacco, and in dispensable luxuries like tea and wine. There 
are the boundless riches of the sea, as yet not half explored, 
or utilized, or economized . We all know how salmon has been 
rendered scarce, and how easily it might again be made plentiful, 
as shown by Alexander Russel, in his entertaining book. If 
sea-fisheries v/ere protected by a law making it illegal to 
destroy fish while breeding, giving them, that is, a couple 
of months’ immunity, it is calculated that this article of 
food might be at once increased tenfold in quantity, and 
probably reduced twenty-fold in price. For every female 

14* u 




322 


ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 


mackerel or herring destroyed in full roe, about 500,000 ova 
perish. 

Finally, there is every reason to believe that cooking — 
scientific cooking, that 'is, by which we mean the intelligent 
treatment of food so as to extract from it the utmost amount 
of healthful nutriment — is in its infancy, or, rather, has scarcely 
entered into life. Probably it is not too much to say that at 
present, owing to our ignorance, carelessness, and clumsiness 
on this head, — added to the extravagance and excess of some, 
-— one half the food consumed is wasted; and that twice the 
numbers now living on the globe — certainly in many of the 
most civilized countries of it — might be maintained on the 
existing produce of the soil. 


THE END. 


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